Editor-in-Chief Rachel Rosenfelt

Creative Director Imp Kerr

Executive Editor Rob Horning

Senior Editors Emily Cooke, Malcolm Harris

Managing Editor Joseph Barkeley

Editors Atossa A. Abrahamian, Adrian Chen, Max Fox, Samantha Hinds, Sarah Leonard, Willlie Osterweil

Associate Editors Tim Barker, Erwin Montgomery

Editors at Large Aaron Bady, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, Laurie Penny

Contributing Editors Elizabeth Greenwood, Nathan Jurgenson, Sarah Nicole Prickett

Arts Editor at Large Jesse Darling

A/V Editor Michelle Groskopf

Business and Development Will Canine

Reader and Advisor Michael Seidenberg

Founding Editors Rachel Rosenfelt, Jennifer Bernstein, Mary Borkowski ESSAYS Eine Kleine SpaceMusik 7 Deena Chalabi interviewed by Nelly Ben Hayoun

U.S.Ai. 16 Malcolm Harris

Athletic Aesthetics 24 Brad Troemel

Flatland 34 Loney Abrams

Get Off 42 Nick Faust

Break it Down 54 Teju Cole

Giants of Boston 59 Maryam Monalisa Ghavari

REVIEWS Creative Tyranny 67 Rob Horning

Leaving on a Jet Plane 75 Jessica Loudis

COLUMN Unsolicited Advice for 84 Living in the End Times Michael Seidenberg models of value creation, as argued by Loney Abrams in “Flatland;” it was argu- ably ever thus, but in a post-Internet econ- omy in which art is primarily viewed on- screen and online, new strategies are both CENTRAL TO THE project of contem- possible and necessary. The alleged democ- porary art—the discourse about it and the ratization effect afforded by networked market for it—is the question of what ac- technologies is often posited as the most tually constitutes art this year, this week, in significant recent development in culture general. As such, it would be inappropri- and society, posing new questions—or,­ ate to offer any kind of editorial consensus let’s face it, the same old questions—as to here, and indeed, the dialogue and dialec- where the work resides and how we should tics generated by the asking and re-asking look at it. Parker Ito’s America Online Made of this question account for most of this Me Hardcore (2013), cited in Brad Tro- publication’s content and a good percent- emel’s “Athletic Aesthetics,” shows a digi- age of all texts and artworks being circu- tized photograph of roses in a vase, with lated in and around the [art] world at any a rough Photoshop paint job scribbled given time. Next year there could be more. over in yellow. Superimposed over the In keeping with the liquid-­modern, image, the text—a handmade font that high-­accelerationist turn that defines plays impishly with that old auratic chest- much contemporary thinking on the pro- nut, the affect of the maker’s hand. An duction and distribution of commodities, the art world’s metabolism just keeps on getting faster. The art market is the fron- tier of spectral, libidinal value creation, hungry and horny, as Nick Faust has it in a juicy romp through the prophylac- tic discourses of art history right up into a chubby, fruit-smelling, late-capitalist NOW where everything is “harsh, ethe- real, fuzzy, stark, amplified, severe, ring- ing.” A fertile slippage occurs when the spheres of knowledge and the spheres of expression begin to merge, as with the work of Nelly Ben Hayoun, (here inter- viewed by Deena Chalabi), whose project International Space Orchestra has several generations of NASA scientists perform- ing and recording a high-modern ab- surdist opera in the SETI Institute. What happens to the recordings? Beamed into space, of course. Artists and curators everywhere are looking beyond the white cube. The func- tion of the gallery remains tied to the pres- ervation of traditional art-world values in order to preserve traditional art-world asshole move, but self-aware: #winning.­ urn.” Art, writes Harris, is a reminder of i heard that picasso made around what is and isn’t allowed. 250,000 works in his lifetime, it reads. Since nothing means anything anymore i could make that many jpegs in 5 and art only serves to co-opt or further years. and when i say 5 years, i mean hegemonic capitalist interests, it would 5 minutes. be easy to forget that art was ever subver- Abrams claims that “the digital pho- sive. Yet Teju Cole and Maryam Monalisa tographic image can be understood as Gharavi, writing respectively on the phe- the homogenizing, ubiquitous medium nomenon of iconoclasm and “The Giant of our era.” Further, by having access to of Boston”—a mural variously interpreted ­audiences and networks online, artists as “an Al Qaeda operative, Bart Simpson can represent and promote themselves, disguised as a mujahideen fighter, the relying less on “market-driven galleries wife of a terrorist, a ‘towel head Islamist and institutions that restrict artists’ free- holding a gun,’ an ‘allah [sic] loving unit- dom to produce prolifically and radically.” ed states hating individual,’ a ‘gay ninja,’ Certainly this prolific radicality is also a Taliban fighter, a ‘tribute to [President hailed by Troemel as the new power mo- Barack] Obama’s birthday,’ and in ‘seri- dus for millennial artists and culture mak- ously poor taste’ ”—point to the latent ers in a world in which the veracity and power of images, and a whisper of what velocity of the stream leave little room that power might speak. Taken out of con- for particularity or affect, and the quan- text, Cole’s embedded icons are no more tity, rather than quality, of an artist’s work or less tumblrable­ than the next Jogging equates with the power and presence of post or space macro, but it’s not always that artistic project. The extraordinary la- easy to disentangle graven images from bor of maintaining a near constant stream flesh and blood. Despite all speculation of content rewards itself, since “even less and evidence to the contrary, art is real. n successful posts will serve to strengthen the bond between artist and audience, giving each a chance to reinforce the ex- istence of the other—‘I’m still here!’ they say in ­unison.” Rob Horning deals with the problem of the artist as a good claims to creativity in a review of Ben Davis’s 9.5 Thesis on Art and Class. “Part of the problem with artists as Jan Mytens, cultural role models,” writes Horning, “is that they authorize a general devaluing of labor by making it seem as though ‘cre- ativity’ is its own reward.” Pitting yellow- Portrait of a Woman ism against officially-sanctioned protest art in “U.S.Ai,” Malcolm Harris describes the myopic, short-circuited logic at work in the art world: “You can put an iPad in a blender, but you can’t just take one off a store shelf to do it. You can break a Han , 1660s Dynasty urn, but not a framed picture of someone else breaking a Han Dynasty 7 Eine Kleine SpaceMusik

NELLY BEN HAYOUN interviewed by DEENA CHALABI

An experience designer discusses making social sculpture from NASA scientists and worms

Deena Chalabi talks with Nelly Ben Hayoun, direction, which began as textile design. My experience designer at the SETI Institute and discipline is design. I still think in those terms. creator and director of the International Space I think about materials, about how they fit to- Orchestra, about the relationships between art gether. I think about communication. and design, science and culture, and history and the future. Ben Hayoun is a visiting professor Do you see big differences between design at the Royal College of Art, the Architectural and art? Association and Central St. Martins, and is a I wouldn’t say there is a big difference these Ph.D. candidate in geography at Royal Hollo- days. There’s not even a question anymore way, University of London. The interview took about the fact that they’re blurring, and I place at Sou Fujimoto’s pavilion at the Serpen- think the blurring of boundaries is actually a tine Gallery in London in July 2013. really good thing. There are no more pure dis- ciplines. I am happy to exploit this, especially DEENA CHALABI: You attended the Roy- in times of crisis. This is how new disciplines al College of Art and you teach there, but and hybrid disciplines can arise. Ultimately, you don’t call yourself an artist. whatever I do, the aim is to communicate. NELLY BEN HAYOUN: I came from the art The experience is for you, the public. world initially. I started in fine arts and used to paint, but I don’t think I was a very good So what is an experience designer? painter. I decided to go into a more craft-based I come from this series of designers called

8 NELLY BEN HAYOUN AND DEENA CHALABI critical designers, speculative designers. My people like Zoe Papadopoulou and Catherine mentor is Anthony Dunne, who taught me Kramer, who have been developing some- while I was at the Royal College of Art for thing that is more about the poetics of science. Design Interaction and who has created this Daisy Ginsberg is another, looking at synthet- whole platform for design for debate. He is ic biology and asking, now that we can hack really pushing the boundaries of design and into DNA and modify it and do pretty much reconsidering the element of fiction. Narra- what we want, then what do we do? tive is a big part of what we do, but instead of finding answers we generate questions. Plenty of people who do similar things to you For example, how might the future of nano- and your Royal College of Art colleagues technology evolve? How might the future of might describe themselves as artists. Your synthetic biology evolve, and how might the last example reminds me of someone like public relate to it? So we try to generate these Eduardo Kac, who uses biotechnology. He questions through design practices. has worked with a genetics lab to splice a jel- But critical design hasn’t just popped lyfish protein and create a glow-in-the-dark up—it’s informed by radical architects like bunny. He describes himself as an artist. Archigram, for example, in the ’60s, by Ital- For me the key difference is about the com- ian Radical Design from the same period. munication and the systems that you try to Digging deep within this area of critical de- design. I’m interested in thinking about not sign, I came up with my own thing, which only the actual object, not only the situa- is the design of experiences, which for me is tion. I think about things as a system, and critical design with input from the theatri- how I will tackle the system, and I will think cal world and the performative world. I look about how I will communicate directly with into improvisation and Commedia dell’Arte the public as my ultimate aim. As a designer and think about how to implement that into you try to embed your systems within global design. I’ve been interested in the theory of socioeconomic ethical contexts. That’s what theater, especially Brecht. I’m creating and what I’m trying to challenge. In a way, yes, artists do that as well. The ques- Who else is doing this kind of work? tion is, Do they think about it in terms of dia- Other people who graduated with me, like grams, mapping, things like that? Thomas Thwaites, who has been doing a toaster from scratch. He has been all over the Can you briefly describe your process? U.K. to try to make his own copper, his own The process is similar in every single proj- plastic, and try to really think about what actu- ect. I always involve fieldwork as part of it, ally makes up a toaster. If you had to do it in a and that’s how I source my collaborators as postindustrial world, what would you do and well. Most of the time the scientists I gather where would you start? Then you have other also end up performing as part of the final

9 EINE KLEINE SPACEMUSIK

­experience. So for the project Dark Energy in board, and we tried to recreate the original the Kitchen Sink, I went to Geneva, into the experiment from 1927. We tried to gather all Large Hadron Collider, which is a gigantic the tools that made this experiment happen experiment over 100 meters underground, in your kitchen. That implies taking apart 27 km in diameter, where scientists have your fridge, getting a really good friend who’s been bombarding protons at the speed of also a nuclear scientist to get hold of some light in order to recreate the first seconds of gadolinium, and so on. At the end of the day the Big Bang. you can be there and beam some microwaves When you hear that, when you think into pigeon’s eggs and actually recreate a bit about it, the scale of it is just completely of dark energy. For me it was this: how is it insane. All these brains, all these physicist possible to recreate a bit of the unknown brains trying to recreate something that took while you eat your pancakes. That was the place on a giant scale and turn it back into situation I designed. something that they can actually operate. That’s really fascinating. They want to know So what does this achieve? exactly what kind of matter is being created, It can speak at many different levels. You can so there is a really technical element of it, the see it on an artistic level and enjoy the aes- scientific value, but there is also the poetic thetic of the objects involved. But you can and the creative side: What does it feel like to also enjoy the scientific level. I haven’t gone be there when you switch on a machine like into the detail of it, but scientists would un- that? That they don’t see. derstand that this is the application of the And that’s where I come on. I, and I guess Casimir experiment. Other people would all of us, would like to be there and would like see the value of the scenario, the narrative to experience the thrill when you switch on that comes with it. I really enjoy that a work such a big, gigantic ma- can be read at many dif- chine that is filled with ferent levels. really powerful magnets. That’s something I wanted to deliver an ex- At the end of the day about the experiences in perience that is as close general. You can choose to this as possible. So I you can beam some to experience it physi- asked, What if you could microwaves into cally and actually play create a machine to gen- pigeon’s eggs and with the things and re- erate the same material actually recreate a bit ally interact with them, being created through of dark energy and at the same time the Large Hadron Col- you can also decide to lider but in your kitchen not interact with them. sink? I got physicists on Most of the time, I want

10 NELLY BEN HAYOUN AND DEENA CHALABI to design and create extreme experiences, ex- ­every single work needs to be associated with treme scenarios, to provoke questions. Like a historical element. I need to know where when a volcano is erupting in your living it comes from. You cannot build up a future room and you have to domesticate it, what without knowing what has come before. would you do? When you develop and design a future sce- nario, there are many different ways of doing Well, I think of the Susan Sontag novel, The it. It can be purely an image or an object, but Volcano Lover, where the titular character I think the power of the experience, what is is passionate about volcanoes and climbs most important for me, is to engage the pub- Vesuvius several times, but he is also in love lic physically—to have your body engaged with his art collection. There is a tension be- with the question of the future. If I can make tween his love of nature, which he can’t con- it happen—and I’m not saying I’ve succeed- trol but responds to quite viscerally, and his ed in that but it’s the whole point of my prac- other love of these delicate human-made art tice—to figure out how you can design future objects. You seem to play a great deal with scenarios with a past and with experience as a the relationship between chaos and control. medium. And really get people to react. There is a fascination there, and a love-hate relationship with the volcano. Everything What is the International Space Orchestra? that is extreme has these elements, and that’s The International Space Orchestra is an or- what I love—this kind of tension between el- chestra made up of space scientists from ements. It gives you the strongest experience. NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Insti- For the volcano, the main reference was tute, which is the Search for Extra-Terrestrial actually Sartre’s play No Exit, when the three Intelligence, Singularity University and the of them are stuck in a room and they don’t International Space University—basically know why they’re all together, and it ends by the Californian community. We had Google saying finally that hell is other people. There at some point, and then they dropped out. is this sort of contained love-and-hate rela- Google and SpaceX should have been added tionship described really well there. But yes, to it because, of course, the private industry I have always been fascinated with the idea of is a really big part of the space community how members of the public experience cha- these days. So anyway, we brought all these os within a closed-loop framework, and that guys together, to play music, performing and comes through in other projects. re-enacting the drama of mission control. Specifically I got them to reenact mission You’re looking towards the future but you control for Apollo 11, so a mission that end- seem interested in cultural memory too, in ed well, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Al- activating the past. drin landing on the moon and actually walk- Maybe it’s because I’m French, but for me ing. But everything leading up to that in the

11 EINE KLEINE SPACEMUSIK control room was actually really wrong. They We still live with the ’80s spirit and ­imaginary had alarm problems, they had fuel problems, around this. So I needed to know what is the they had all these issues. And I asked them to human condition behind it. To do that, I had re-enact it. to come up with a project that they can really Of course the people from the original be part of in some sense. mission control are from a completely differ- ent generation—they are all 83 years old. So What was your intended outcome, given this was a young generation mixed up with your investment in the process? the older generation as well, testing how to There are different ways of reading a project. react to intense pressure. There was a big My personal reading is almost anthropologi- team of collaborators who were also part of cal. I tried to figure out who this space com- the performance called Ground Control: An munity is, how they organize, and who they Opera in Space. It is 27 minutes long, and it’s are. This meant designing microevents within three acts, three dramas in the control room. NASA Ames that were complete within them- Then there are interludes of music by Damon selves and where each of them was given a role Albarn and Bobby Womack. We had a Japa- that is not their role in real life. For example nese composer called Maywa Denki and the the head of NASA wouldn’t play the head of libretto was written by science-fiction writer NASA, someone else would be doing it. Bruce Sterling. In these scenarios, you have to discuss with the person who is going to play the role, You have to admit, there is this huge degree and that creates dialogue between people of absurdity to this project. who actually had never met in their work- That’s the exact point. I started by saying I’m space—there are 2,700 people at the Ames going to approach NASA by coming up with Research Center specifically. So people had the most absurd project I can think of, like the to discuss their research and sometimes International Space Orchestra, and follow up fought because they said, “You’re not per- the information from the reception desk to forming my role properly,” and so on. And the head of NASA. And in the process try to I was really interested in that. Also in some- figure out, What is this agency these days? one like John Cage—how you can design What is NASA? Because in a way we have all a microevent, and his special name for his bought into the imaginary that they’ve cre- instructions: event scores. When you write ated, around the moon landing and all that. something and make it happen or not hap- Nowadays nobody knows the names of any pen, it’s like music. The action is like music. of the astronauts who are on the Interna- I like that. tional Space Station. Some people don’t even know what the ISS is about. Nobody knows What have you learned about the relation- that the Mir station is not working anymore. ship between culture and science?

12 NELLY BEN HAYOUN AND DEENA CHALABI

I think you just have to accept there are don’t design or create products— ­different understandings of things. That’s the For me the product is an event. most difficult part. We can totally understand each other, but the way they speak about the Right, but the notion of what a market project is so different from the way we speak means is one of the things that continues to about it. Sometimes it creates tension, espe- distinguish design from art. cially when you’re a control freak like I am. It That’s true. can be really frustrating. I produce and direct my shows, or do a film if need be, and I can Your work seems to buck trends on both say, This is the particular imagery we’re using. sides—to create an event or an experience I can design and control the quality of the vi- goes against the prevalence and status of the sual images associated with the project, and object in the categories of art and design. So so there is a really strong visual identity for how do you define your market? the International Space Orchestra. Wherever Hans Ulrich Obrist just said something in- they go and speak about the orchestra, they teresting to me. He said I was doing social still have that material, even if they will speak sculpture. I thought that was a lovely way of about it differently. At least we have a base. putting it together. But who is my market? My audience is all of us. It depends on the You mentioned that you see this as anthro- site, the setting. I will use a nightclub, or even pological research, but you’re much more a gallery, or a public space like a park. I’ll do than even a participant observer. something at a festival to get the broadest But that’s the thing. All of this is becoming possible audience for the experience. part of my Ph.D. in geography. I’m really in- terested in the notion of ­explorers. But where does your funding come from? The funding is interesting, you’re right. The relationship between geography and art It can come from public engagement and is interesting—are you familiar with Trevor from more scientific outreach organizations Paglen? He is an artist and an experimen- such as the Science and Technology Facili- tal geographer who has investigated satel- ties Council and the Institute of Physics. Or lites and surveillance, and recently sent im- it can come from art sources like the Arts ages into space. He comes from a Marxist-­ Council or from the British Council design geography background. Your discussion department. It just depends. For the new of the role of design also evokes for me the project Disaster Playground there are several early 20th century Russian constructivists partners. You have the V&A, which is more who wanted to move away from a bourgeois craft-based and interested in traditional de- concept of what an artist could be. So I want sign; Z33, the house for contemporary art in to go back to the notion of your market. You Belgium, which is more art-based; Broadway

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Cinema; and the last partner so far, Aban- headquarters, and they’re still being used don Normal Devices festival, more related for experiments. I’m investigating now how to the digital. to get to these worms and find out more about them. I’m in the research-and-devel- What’s that project? opment phase for that project, which will It’s about when things go wrong. It’s about take about five years and will lead to a big- failure and catastrophe in the space program. ger film, I hope. There are many different narratives involved, but basically it’s questioning the notion of How do you feel human nature is going to catastrophe within NASA, and how they ­react faced with increased access to space? communicate it to the public and how they I prefer the process of accessing the impos- speculate and plan for it. sible than to actually seeing it happening. For For example, there is a whole department example, I have an issue with the fact that the called the Near Earth Orbit program, which aim of the International Space Orchestra has is thinking about and designing emergency always been about sending the music into responses to, say, an asteroid that might hit space. We create the music, we send it into us in 2040. So I go there and I get them to en- space, and then I follow up the entire process. act for me what they would do—who would And now it’s happening. It’s going to lift off they contact, how would they work, what on August 5—we have two satellites that are sort of simulation have they put together? going to be broadcasting the music in space. And that is when you realize the complete So it’s actually really happening. absurdity of what the plans are. The plans are But there somehow is then a big ethical to bombard a chunk of white paint into the question there. When you get to the point asteroid to get it to slow down, to slow its ve- where it’s actually happening, and it’s not locity so that it doesn’t hit us. That’s the plan. about speculation, or interrogating bureau- So the project will have this sort of narration, cracy or interrogating technology, but it’s mixed with the worms and other things. actually a readymade package, it becomes a bit problematic for me. That’s the same The worms? thing for space exploration in some sense. When the Challenger exploded in 1996, I say we should all have access to space NASA was responsible because there was exploration—I work as an experience de- a structural problem. They launched the signer at the SETI Institute so of course I rocket, but it was too cold, and everything support it, but I don’t support space explo- exploded and was destroyed. The only ration for the sake of sending humans into things that survived were these worms that space to drink Coca-Cola and do the same were on the rocket for an experiment. And things that they are doing on earth, and not those worms are still being stored at NASA in a poetic way.

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So what for you are the poetics of space they don’t see themselves as equals. ­exploration? But that’s something I’ve been really You’re asking me what are the universal ele- careful about. This collaboration only works ments we should send up there. That’s the if you have this discussion on a level play- Golden Record. That’s Frank Drake. He is ing field. So that’s the way I handle it. And if one of the founding directors of SETI and someone is still using a top-down approach put together the Golden Record. I inter- with me, I just don’t work with him. viewed him about how he came up with it, and he was saying how difficult it was to It needs to be critical, not just celebratory. make a decision about what should go on Yes. And you really need a curator, a qual- it, what should we send up there, what sort ity check. My role is about this quality con- of message it should contain. I don’t know trol for how ideas are communicated—it’s how to answer that. someone’s research, someone’s life. It’s not about science as much as it’s about respect- But I think I’m asking something else ing someone’s work. about the process. There are very compli- cated politics of exploration and coloniza- You dedicate the ISO project to your grand- tion that go into the discovery of space and parents. Why? its imaginary as a whole. As an ethnogra- I’ve been really bloody lucky in the sense pher of that imaginary, now that you’ve that my family has always supported my acted as a broker between one sphere and madness. Like when it came to taking things another, I’m curious to know what you feel apart, throwing ketchup all over the place. is missing. I used to experiment with modeling with How do art and science inform each other? clay—I didn’t know how to do it. So I put They’re part of a whole. I don’t know how my grandmother into a mold made of plas- else to put it, but I can talk about the chal- ter, and then we had to get her to the hos- lenges of the collaboration. When you work pital to get her hand out because I’d used with scientists who need to learn their vo- too much. Things like that. They really let cabulary and they need to figure out a bit me do the whole trial-and-error thing. And more about the end product—that can be they always taught me to remain humble difficult. There’s also this certain top-down whomever you meet. My family couldn’t approach that needs to be avoided, of “I am care where I am or whom I’m working with. an artist and you are the scientist and you They went through the Armenian genocide know about the real stuff and I don’t.” A and what is important is how you commu- lot of people are doing that, going to scien- nicate memory over generations, and how tists and scaling their skills and knowledge you tell stories. Storytelling is a big part of down because they’re in a new field and my Armenian culture. That and cooking. n

15 16 U.S.Ai.

by MALCOLM HARRIS

In America, Ai Weiwei isn’t a dissident or a rebel. He’s a foreign-policy asset and an artist of art’s limits

“What can they do besides exile or make me something second-rate in the bunch. An art- disappear? They have no imagination or ist working in a single medium can develop creativity.” themes or patterns, but for conceptual art- —Ai Weiwei ists, their work too often collapses into a bi- nary of one or not-one ideas. Either you can describe what they do in a sentence, or you don’t bother. LARGE SOLO SHOWS are risky for con- Down this narrow tightrope unicycled ceptual artists: too much coherence across “Ai Wei Wei: According to What?” with a the work and they might come off like a one- balance that would make any daredevil jeal- trick pony; too little, a dilettante. Wall after ous. The show appeared at the Hirshhorn wall of polka dots makes a viewer feel like the in Washington D.C., from October 2012 to butt of a joke called art, while a haphazard February 2013, before going on a tour of four jumble of paintings, photographs, and sculp- other North American museums; it opens at tures raises the suspicion that there must be the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto later

17 U.S.AI.

stark contrast with the spaceless wallpapering shots of the Beijing Olympic Stadium that he helped design. One radius of the Hirshhorn doughnut was devoted to Ai’s vases. Where Damien Hirst plays with diamonds, Ai toys with artifacts: a Neolithic vase with a painted silver Coca-Cola logo. Against the gallery’s outer wall was the larger-than-life photo trip- tych of Ai dropping a Han Dynasty urn to shatter on the ground. Though the show occupied the large ­second-floor gallery of the Hirshhorn (and the 12 great bronze lollipops that make up Ai’s “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” sur- rounded the outside fountain in the eye of the building’s hurricane architecture), “Ac- cording to What?” still felt like a zoo whose big cats are kept uncomfortably close. This Art under guard at “Ai Wei Wei: According to What?” is, after all, an artist who once memorably Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., October 2012 Photo by the author filled the Tate’s Turbine Hall with 100 mil- lion (possibly toxic) sunflower seeds. The this month, and will land at the Brooklyn expressly political balances with the innocu- Museum early next year. ously abstract, but while the content is evenly It’s not a stretch to call Ai the world’s weighed, the sheer volume threatens to over- most famous living artist, as the New York whelm its bounds. It has the unnatural vibe Times did. He might well be the best-known of an all-star team or rock supergroup. Instal- artist in America. While his big-name market lation art, like other apex predators, demands ­competitors have mined obscurantism and a lot of space. self-parody in a constant struggle to create Ai is a conceptual artist in a more straight- stakes for their work, Ai’s collisions with Chi- forward sense than most of his contempo- nese censors make his significancereadily— ­ raries. It’s possible to place his installations and internationally—apparent. CNN cer- in part because his more notable pieces have tainly wasn’t seeking out Damien Hirst for specific referents: a pile of painted ceramic election commentary. river crabs puns off the similarity of the ani- Inside the exhibit, the black-and-white mal’s name with the word for harmony—a photos of Ai hanging out in the East Village euphemism used to justify Chinese govern- in the ’80s have an Instagram scale that’s in ment censorship. Thousands of crustaceans

18 MALCOLM HARRIS

Guarded Ai Weiwei installations Photo by the author

abut large stacks of rebar salvaged from indeed: he’s a well-respected and politically schools that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan conscious international artist who doesn’t earthquake, an indictment of the govern- have a grudge against the United States. In ment’s shoddy building practices and equally fact, he kind of likes the good old U.S.A. In shoddy cover-up. Ai has been investigating an interview with New York Times columnist the truth behind the earthquake’s conse- and Inspector Clouseau of imperialism Nich- quences, and he’s listed the results in classi- olas Kristof, Ai said, “China still needs help cally grim fashion: floor-to-ceiling names of from the U.S. To insist on certain values, that the dead. Overhead, there curves an undulat- is the role of the U.S.” When goaded to com- ing centipede of children’s backpacks, repre- plain, he faults America for not dealing with senting those lost. It’s not the full piece, but China more actively on human rights. the viewer gets the idea. This is certainly how America likes to In Ai, American pundits find a rare bird think of itself—as a global force for liberal

19 U.S.AI. enlightenment values like free speech—­ David Wojnarowicz? How would we read a especially in comparison with China, its larg- cross covered in ants in Beijing? We wouldn’t est rival and creditor. But artists, including see a pile of American rubble or a scorched Ai, have been quick to point out the U.S.’s in- flag in a Chinese museum as a celebration of consistent moralizing. What good is artistic transnational artistic vision, it would appear freedom to a drone strike victim? to us as thinly veiled aggression, as a provo- As a liberal critic of the Chinese gov- cation. China’s motives would seem obvious ernment, Ai makes a great addition to the and opportunistic in equal measure. American line. The same country—and it is Ai is no naive painter stuck between two very much the same country—that denied superpowers in a bipolar world. The artist is Paul Robeson his passport for fear he would clear as can be about his geopolitical thoughts shed too much light on his home uses China’s in Weiwei-isms, a poorly named collection of refusal to let Ai attend the Hirshhorn opening Tweets and other short statements turned as just another example of backward chauvin- aphorisms published by Princeton Press and ist totalitarianism. Wrenched from his con- excerpted in the global market’s official -pa text as an internal critic, Ai’s pieces take on per, The Wall Street Journal. everything is new meaning and a new violence. His pile of art. everything is politics. is embossed rebar wreckage tells a different story when on the black back cover in gold. He’s up-front displayed in a country that spent over $100 about the collusion between his home coun- million remaking and watching Red Dawn as try and America: “Because of the economic a paranoid fantasy about Chinese invasion. crisis, China and the United States are bound If we think of America as a neutral space, together. This is a totally new phenomenon, a Switzerland for the celebration of the and nobody will fight for ideology anymore. world’s art, it blinds us to historical context. It’s all about business.” We’re not that far from the time when Gen- Though the lines between nations are eral Douglas MacArthur told a French re- blurred, Ai’s calculus is simple. In Weiwei- porter, “Give me a handful of bombs and I’ll ism after Weiwei-ism, he puts freedom of take care of China’s industrial bases.” When expression on a pedestal. It’s circular logic: it comes to art, Americans view themselves artists need freedom of expression so they as cosmopolitans, citizens of the world; we can further the cause of freedom expres- forget that everyone else doesn’t have cause sion. Art is for politics, politics is for art. He’s to draw our self-serving separation between been willing to offer a tacit endorsement of policy and pretension. American policy—the headline on his CNN When the National Art Museum of Chi- op-ed was “Despite flaws, America should be na rises next to the Bird’s Nest Stadium Ai proud”—under a kind of Cold War enemy- helped design, how would Americans react if of-my-enemy logic. they displayed a giant posthumous show by But there’s more than one way to tame

20 MALCOLM HARRIS

Democracia, Ser y Durar

Hirshhorn Museum gift shop. Photo by the author

an artist, and liberal democracies have de- tising, and good work at that. But the room’s veloped their own strategies of containment punch line is off to one side: Here the giant for the unruly. The deal liberalism has made slogans are miniaturized and made portable with art is that artists can say whatever they on T-shirts and tote bags. You can actually buy want as long as they don’t touch anything i shop therefore i am on a postcard. No art that doesn’t belong to them. And artists have show, even at a state-supported museum, is to compete for attention with multibillion-­ complete without the merch table. dollar corporations bent on entertaining In one of the basement projector rooms, their way into viewers’ pockets. That way, the there’s a film by Democracia, a Madrid-based risk to current structures of power is mini- arts collective. Ser y Durar (To Be and To mized without disturbing the state’s osten- Last) is a video of Spanish parkour runners sible commitment to freedom of expression. as they traverse the city outside the implied And when art struggles in its fuzzy handcuffs, routes. It looks like a very cool Nike ad; their it generates new images for sale. hoodies are emblazoned with emblems the For outstanding examples of tamed art, creators explain “refer to the working class, you needn’t look further than the Hirshhorn’s internationalism, anarchy, secret societies, basement. There, Barbara Kruger’s giant an- and revolution.” Referring to revolution is ticonsumerist slogans cover the floors and something contemporary branding agencies walls, money makes money on one escalator are really good at: Your cell phone carrier is and you want it. you buy it. you forget revolutionary, your body spray is revolution- it. on another. They’re blunt, leaving little to ary, your nail polish remover is revolutionary. the imagination; it’s advertising against adver- Art, however, merely refers.

21 U.S.AI.

Sinéad Murphy describes liberalism’s pac- freedom to create fetish objects, to invest a ification of art well in her book The Art Kettle: thing with enough value that it can’t help but “ ‘freedom’ as a regulative ideal tends, once it be a representation, a reference. Ai marvels begins to operate at the level of form rather in Weiwei-isms about what he can get away than content, to reduce political action to a with under the label of “art,” but he doesn’t mere performance of action, to remake it as attempt to probe why that’s the case, to mea- an ‘installation’ with merely aesthetic import, sure the costs. and thereby to manage very well its scope As a case study, let’s look at Ai’s Dropping and its effects.” Duchamp’s readymades a Han Dynasty Urn. proved that, within the rules, anything could On the surface level, the photo set ap- be fetishized as art, any object could become pears to mock artistic fetishism: Ai looks like art and earn protection as such. But once a he could not possibly give a fuck as he lets toilet becomes art, the process isn’t revers- the valuable artifact shatter on the ground. ible. Freedom of artistic expression is the There’s a sublime disregard in the pictures; it’s

Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995

22 MALCOLM HARRIS art against art like Kruger’s sentences are ads England and not Russia, there won’t be a Hu- against ads. But as an artist, Ai can’t destroy man Rights Watch report, as there was for art, he can only make more. From one urn, he the band Pussy Riot when they were arrested gets three pictures. If I went into the Hirsh- for trespassing. Even anticapitalist arts writ- horn, grabbed one of the photos off the wall, ers called for his head on a platter. and let it fall to ground like I didn’t give a fuck, Art, like the market, promises that you I would be arrested and taken to jail. It’s only can do anything you want, as long as you freedom of expression if you break something keep your hands to yourself. You can put you own. Otherwise it’s vandalism. an iPad in a blender, but you can’t just take One true vandal, Vladimir Umanets, one off a store shelf to do it. You can break a learned this lesson (or taught it) very pub- Han Dynasty urn, but not a framed picture of licly when he was sentenced to two years in someone else breaking a Han Dynasty urn. prison for writing “a potential work of yel- In America, Ai Wei Wei’s pieces are lowism” on a Mark Rothko painting in Lon- paired with their imagined absence in Chi- don’s Tate Modern. Yellowism is the idea that na. It’s a single gigantic work of implied dis- if anything can become art regardless of its tinction, a portrait of freedom of expression use value, then we could imagine a third cat- drawn in negative space. In the Hirshhorn egory of stuff past art, in light of which the he is to art as art is to capitalism: a reminder art/non-art distinction dissolves. Both are of what’s allowed. n equally potential works of yellowism, just like a soup can and a urinal are equally art ob- jects. Umanets’s writing “a potential work of yellowism” on a Rothko is the same as Duch- amp’s Sharpie-ing “a potential work of art” on a toilet while he takes a piss. Except Umanets isn’t an artist. We know he’s not an artist be- cause he’s in jail in England, and England, Ai would remind us, has freedom of expression. Umanets wasn’t looking for freedom of expression, but freedom fromexpression, out from under the artistic injunction to replace what you destroy. He wanted to break with- out buying, but that’s not in liberalism’s deal. And no one cries for a vandal. Because Umanets is a vandal and not an artist, there won’t be any complaints from the U.S. State Department. Because this is

23 24 Athletic Aesthetics

by BRAD TROEMEL

A new species of hyperproductive artist flooding the Internet with content invites audiences to complete their work by loving their brand, making the artists themselves the masterpiece

VISUAL ARTISTS, POETS, and musicians creators must compete for online attention are releasing free content online faster than in the midst of an overwhelming amount of ever before. There is an athleticism to these information. Artists using social media have aesthetic outpourings, with artists taking on transformed the notion of a “work” from the creative act as a way of exercising oth- a series of isolated projects to a constant er muscle groups, bodybuilding a personal broadcast of one’s artistic identity as a recog- brand or self-mythology, a concept or a for- nizable, unique brand. That is, what the artist mal vocabulary. Images, music, and words once accomplished by making commodities become drips in a pool of art sweat, puddling that could stand independently from them online for all to view. The long-derided notion is now accomplished through their ongo- of the “masterpiece” has reached its logical an- ing self-commodification. This has reversed tithesis with the aesthlete: a cultural producer the traditional recipe that you need to cre- who trumps craft and contemplative brood- ate art to have an audience. Today’s artist on ing with immediacy and rapid production. the Internet needs an audience to create art. Athletic aesthetics are a by-product of An aesthlete’s audience, once assembled, be- art’s new mediated environment, wherein comes part of their medium.

25 ATHLETIC AESTHETICS

­media alters viewing habits. When looking at a screen, we don’t fixate on a single status up- date, image, website, or work for long. Part of this is because the interfaces militate against it: 140 characters is a light reading load. In the cases of Tumblr and Facebook, the in- formation piling up in a newsfeed flows past viewers almost automatically into a virtually bottomless well. But attention spans are also constrained because each bid for our attention on social media can prompt an endless hunt for a more complete understanding of its context. An endless cascade of tabs can arise from a sim- ple friend request, far beyond “Who is this person, anyway?” Little can be meaningfully understood about any given person based on an isolated Tweet or profile picture. Mu- Parker Ito, America Online Made Me Hardcore, 2013 tual friends need to be investigated, personal website links in the About Me section need Posting work to the Internet without a to be opened, geotagged restaurants need to network of viewers in place raises the same be Googled and their menus canvassed for questions as the proverbial tree falling in an the kinds of ingredients favored. And to get empty forest. If a Tumblr post has no notes, satisfactory context for the work of a single is it art? Does it exist? For young artists us- person, viewers may have to go through all of ing social media, the answer is no. If an audi- that person’s online folders, scrolling all the ence for their work isn’t maintained, it ­loses way back to when they first joined whatever the context necessary for regarding it as service they’re using. Caring too much about art. Facing dim employment prospects and any one item to the exclusion of the others precarious conditions (not to mention mas- readily available now seems to jeopardize the sive debt from higher education), such prac- viewer’s ability to understand the whole. titioners aggressively seek to exercise clout Even if you don’t go on winding quests in the online attention economy through for context and allow information to passive- overproduction. ly wash over you through your feed, you ulti- Just as conditions have changed for art- mately arrive at the same place: recognizing ists, they have also changed for audiences. patterns amid flow rather than shutting the The refresh rate of information in social floodgates. As Marshall McLuhan claimed

26 BRAD TROEMEL in “The Medium Is the Massage”:

Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by- step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay. a stream of work in social media to ride atop The idea of memorizing art-history the wave in viewers’ newsfeeds, or else be- slides to demonstrate a mastery of the can- come the wave itself, overwhelming them on now seems like a quaint reminder of a with material. The tacit agreement between time when individual works somehow meant the aesthlete and the viewer is to be mutu- more than the always fluid relationships be- ally indifferent toward quality understood as tween them. Audiences no longer have the slick production value or refined craft. For luxury of imagining that there is a static re- aesthletes, the point of their work is not only gime of aesthetic stability dictating quality what it expresses but the speed at which it’s and meaning. Passive viewers, who consume expressed. The ideal presentation of their at the same pace as those they follow produce, work is the constant broadcast. and context hunters, who compress that pro- With the constant broadcast as goal, cess in time, end up with the same herme- ­editing oneself becomes a waste of resources. neutic, finding meaning in the lines drawn Time spent on anything is time worth being from one bit of information to the next. redeemed in attention by sharing it. A private To maintain the aerial view necessary for process of refinement is simply lost time. For patterns to emerge, one must cultivate a dis- aesthletes, the studio as a site of self-reflection position of indifference. To be indifferent is and craft goes public; no middle ground or to believe that any one thing is as important time lapse between production and publicity as any other. Social media anticipate and re- is necessary. For the audience, what’s missing inforce this attitude, presenting, say, news in production value is supposedly recouped from Afghanistan and a former high school in honesty and personal connection with cre- friend’s lunch in the same format, with the ators, whose every image, poem, song, video, same gravity. or status update becomes a chance for direct Athletic aesthetics inverts this indiffer- interaction. Viewers need not hope for a mo- ent disposition, using it to produce as well as mentary glimpse of the artist at an opening view content. Instead of creating a few, thor- or await the chance to see musicians onstage. oughly worked pieces, the aesthlete produces­ The artist’s aura has been leveled and spread

27 ATHLETIC AESTHETICS

across dozens of daily opportunities to com- ment, like, and reblog. The privacy of the stu- dio starts to be perceived as a form of censor- ship, and even oversaturated celebrities like Beyoncé must have a Tumblr now. The underlying promise of Rate/Com- ment/Subscribe! culture is that viewers can engage in a more direct form of fandom, in which their tributary comments and re- blogs are directly acknowledged by artists and eventually become an element in their creative process. Audiences can now believe they are co-creators, collaborating with art- ists by appreciating them. The upvoted com- menter who distills and wittily articulates the general sentiment of an audience’s reac- tion to social-media works is hailed a kind of hero, the voice of the people, as with Pat- ton Oswalt’s Thor83 character in Portlandia‘s season three Evite episode. Of course, this was once the artist’s claim to heroism—being sensitive to the times and other people’s affect so as to express a gen- eral sentiment or zeitgeist in a unique, com- pelling way. Aesthletes’ self-editing is now outsourced to the audience, who carefully pick over the barrage of content with un- precedented zeal. Their eagerness to assess and evaluate artists’ work lies somewhere between being volunteer market researchers and a wish to bend artists to their will and “democratize” their art. While that kind of direct democratiza- tion may be wishful thinking, aesthletes certainly rely on decentralized audiences to perpetuate their virality, which is the essen- tial content of their work. It’s impossible to

28 BRAD TROEMEL

­imagine Steve Roggenbuck’s practice apart This dynamic of the audience self-­ from his commenting, poking, and liking screening for their favorite content makes his viewers every step of the way. This inter- the risks associated with releasing undesir- action, and the compounding attention he able content fairly low, while enhancing the receives for it, is not peripheral to his work potential rewards of releasing beloved con- but integral to the messianic nature of his tent. The opportunity costs for not releasing delivery. Roggenbuck’s calls to self-improve- work quickly rise as audiences becomes less ment, creative ambition, and ethical living discriminatory and more participatory. Thus are nothing without the interplay of an audi- aesthletes rationally adopt a lottery-like gam- ence whose widespread response serves as a bit of releasing as much work as possible: The marker of affect for the message of his videos more they release, the more likely one will and writing, which verge on art-as-self-help. become a hit. And even less successful posts For Roggenbuck, going viral doesn’t spread will serve to strengthen the bond between his work so much as complete it. artist and audience, giving each a chance to

29 ATHLETIC AESTHETICS reinforce the existence of the other—“I’m still here!” they say in unison. Athletic aesthetics amounts to the ­supply-side gamification of the art attention economy. Notes, likes, and reblogs serve as the quantitative basis for influence in an art world where critics’ written word has been stripped of power. Art making becomes a fast-paced, high-volume endeavor analogous to the universe of automated high-­frequency stock trading. This mode of trading sup- plants floor traders with unmanned comput- ers responsible for moving fractional sums according to complicated if-then sequences programmed by quantitative analysts. The speed of trades are central to their strategic functionality, so much so that companies in New York and London have lobbied for new fiberoptic cables across the Atlantic to ensure maximum velocity. Critics argue such trading methods fail to create “true” economic value: Rather than prompt companies to become more efficient or make better products, algorithmic trading merely capitalizes on rapid capital shuffling and micro-arbitrage. Others worry that vast automation leaves the market vulnerable to a single digital glitch generating systemic mar- ket crashes, as in the case of the “flash crash” on May 6, 2010, and again on August 1 that year, when software at Knight Capital Group malfunctioned, setting off unintend- ed trades and leading to a $440 million loss for the company. Such criticism of algorithmic trading echoes complaints leveled at aesthletes. ­Proto-aesthlete Soulja Boy—propelled to

30 BRAD TROEMEL fame by the “glitch” of his online audience’s in- way. On a practical level, this stream-of-con- explicable obsession with “Crank That (Soul- sciousness mode of production also allows ja Boy)”—was vilified as unoriginal, in light Lil B to release a much larger amount of mu- of his prodigious, Fruity Loops–driven out- sic at a faster rate. put of music on Myspace. Aesthletes are of- In the art world, Nick Faust sticks out as ten criticized on the basis of individual works, a prime example of an aesthletic approach whereas viewers must engage as much of their to curating art on Facebook, posting 20 or catalog-in-process as they can to find the pat- so new albums of art and art-related images terns necessary for its meaning to emerge. every day. The type of work posted adheres While firms have given over stock trad- to no specific formal or conceptual interest, ing to vast warehouses of black boxes with ranging from Byzantine works to contempo- blinking lights, the aesthlete merely emulates rary textiles to PVC stock photography, just machine-like modes of creativity. Among the as Lil B’s wide-open interests range freely. (As most famous of these semiautomated modes he says, ”I can do ‘Swag OD’ but then my fa- is the improvisational spoken-word format vorite musical artist right now could be Ant- of “Based” freestyling, created by alpha aesth- ony and the Johnsons.”) Faust’s immense lete Lil B. His Based delivery, a DIY deskill- outpouring of content upends the traditional ing of hip-hop’s oxymoronically conservative understanding of curatorial practice by over- freestyle format, emphasizes absurdity, inco- whelming his audience rather than provid- herence, and chance verbal collisions rather ing a concise selection. Like other aesthletes, than the traditionally valued characteristics of Faust becomes a wholesaler of content, al- fluid delivery and cohesive narrative wordplay. lowing his Facebook friends to pick through Based freestyle opens the sluice for any vocal ef- and engage with the images they find most fort—no matter how poor by traditional stan- relevant. Ignored photo sets serve only to dards—to be accepted as a completed track. reinforce Faust’s commitment to sharing as Doing another take would defeat the purpose much as humanly possible, whether that ma- of the Based style’s aesthetic of chance, thus terial is popular or not. setting up a procedural pattern that buoys any Wide nets are cast by those who, like supposed shortcoming in content. Lil B and Nick Faust, are young and/or en- Since honesty is redefined as directness, ergetic enough to overshare. Perhaps the the customary checks and balances of stu- most athletic aspect of these individuals is dio editing become a kind of dishonesty or their unmistakable embrace of competition, trickery. The most incoherent, poorly timed, which their efforts unreservedly respond to and narratively abstract Based freestyles and foster. This social-media-induced com- thus appear as the most successful, perpetu- petition is not without its detractors. Me- ating a perception of Lil B as a bold creator dia theorist Geert Lovink has recently ar- unwilling or unable to censor himself in any gued in Adbusters that

31 ATHLETIC AESTHETICS

the aesthlete from the overworked intern or Today psychopathology reveals itself sweatshop worker is that the aesthletes’ la- ever more clearly as a social epidemic and, more precisely, to be a socio- bor serves themselves; it’s self-exploitation communicational one. If you want to rather than exploitation at the hands of other survive you have to be competitive, capitalists. and if you want to be competitive To demand payment for these self-im- you must be connected, receive and process continuously an immense and posed ventures of overproduction, one must growing amount of data. This provokes first ask the following questions, posed by a constant attentive stress, a reduction Andrea Fraser in her essay “How to Provide of the time available for affectivity … If we bring this analysis to the internet we an Artistic Service: An Introduction”: see two movements—the expansion of storage and the compression of time— Fees are, by definition, payment for making online work so stressful. services. If we are, then, accepting payment in exchange for our services, does that mean we are serving those Like the athlete who lives to perform who pay us? If not, who are we serving for stadiums and television audiences of and on what basis are we demanding payment (and should we be demanding millions, the aesthlete basks in the stress of payment)? Or, if so, how are we serving overproduction. While competition exists them (and what are we serving)? between the aesthlete and the slower-mov- ing, perfectionist artists of the previous gen- By serving themselves, most aesthletes eration (as evidenced in the Lil B vs. Game provide their content for free. The ease of feud), the main competition for aesthletes access to their work reinforces the low-risk/ comes from within themselves. At the risk high-reward dynamic of their overproduc- of romanticizing a potentially self-harming tion, as Pitchfork contributor Mike Powell practice born of precarity, there is a certain notes: euphoria, like the endorphin-fueled exhaus- tion of a runner’s high, in depleting your Ultimately, my take with Lil B is that he keeps the price of entry to his mental and physical faculties to the greatest world so low that complaining about extent possible, especially when this exertion him is a waste of energy. He offers drives the expression of an expanding cre- himself to his audience for nothing — ative vision. Just as in weightlifting, in which giving him nothing shouldn’t be hard. Furthermore, I don’t even know what mass is gained from strenuous reps that de- “ironic” means in the context of Lil B. stroy and prompt the enlarged rebuilding of If he really didn’t think that the world muscle fibers, athletic aestheticism promises was a beautiful and endlessly amusing place, where does he find the energy to that artistic progression will come more sure- keep rapping about it for free? ly from the stress of strenuous making than from contemplative reverie. What separates

32 BRAD TROEMEL

Most aesthletes secure artistic freedom a CD can fit only so many songs without only by working in the precarious space out- become a bulky boxed set, a magazine col- side the governing institutions of their field. umn can have only so many words before it Lil B remains unsigned, and aesthletes prac- crowds out the advertising sold to support ticing visual art are far more of a presence it. The internet-induced stress that Lovink on the Internet than in physical galleries. refers to is born from the infinite expanse Even if the contemporary art world accepts of storage the internet opens up. Without challenges to received notions of quality— a clearly defined limit on content, where deskilling has been widely debated at least does a creator start or stop? The aesthlete’s since Duchamp’s time—it has maintained a answer is to continuously sprint up Mario’s less flexible approach toward quantity, up- infinite staircase—it’s the journey, not the holding relatively conservative restrictions destination. about how many exhibitions an institution In an attention economy, there is more should have per year, how large an exhibi- value in being ubiquitous than scarce, espe- tion space should be, and how many works cially when there is no added cost to publi- are appropriate to stuff in a certain square cizing more works and no depletion of digi- footage per show. The same goes for artists: tal content’s aura, given that it permanently There still are (rarely spoken) rules as to exists only as a copy for all. The waiting pe- how many works an artist should produce riod between releases that once structured in a series for it to be financially viable and the market and assigned a price to each work how often an artist should release new work does not suit online content. There is now without making previous work seem obso- simply not enough time for a single assessor lete or a career mistake the artist is eager to to explore an aesthlete’s full catalog, or for repudiate. In other words, from the conven- the market to price it all. The aesthlete is out- tional art world’s perspective, appropriating running them. mass-­produced goods is a legitimate artistic Instead, the artist’s personality becomes gesture insofar as the goods are not appropri- the sellable good. Attention acquired in new ated and serially exhibited en masse. media can be leveraged to sell more inherent- Release schedules for work were once ly scarce goods and services, like teaching, fully orchestrated by culture-industry insti- lectures, concerts, and books. Aesthletes’ tutions, tailored to the market-researched work becomes inseparable from the theatre demands of a buying audience. In the case of their own excessive labor. of television, shows would be edited so to If the value of the masterpiece was found anticipate commercial breaks in the nar- in its timelessness and material specific- rative. Time and space imposed limits on ity, the aesthlete’s ambition is to exist most these institutions: a white room can fit only fully in the limited time and infinite space to so many paintings without overflowing, which they can lay claim. n

33 34 Flatland

by LONEY ABRAMS

The difference between artworks and their documentation images online is collapsing. So is the prestige economy of traditional galleries

FAR MORE PEOPLE see art on screens stood as the homogenizing, ubiquitous me- than in museums. The gallery is no longer dium of our era. the primary exhibition space; the Internet is. If the Internet is the main space in which As documentation—photographs or videos art meets its audience, then documentation that capture a finished work of art, usually in- media must be considered an artistic medi- stalled within a gallery—are posted to the In- um in its own right, the most consequential ternet and then dispersed and multiplied via representation of an artist or curator’s work. likes and shares, online viewers become the Artworks exist not as physical entities, but as overwhelming majority of an exhibition’s au- JPEGs, and their visibility relies not on their dience. The digital image is supplanting the physical presence within a gallery but on art object. All works, regardless of their ma- their online accessibility. The gallery, then, terial constituents, are flattened, scaled down serves not as the “true” exhibition venue but to several hundred pixels. Consequently, the the site of a photo shoot—the backdrop to digital photographic image can be under- the installation photo. It provides the oppor-

35 FLATLAND tunity to document art within an institution- selves. Further, while galleries restrict how, alized context in preparation for its release when, and where their represented artists into online circulation. show their work to keep demand high, the Aware that the physical exhibitions they attention economy rewards artists who pro- design will eventually be re-presented im- duce and share frequently, encouraging art- materially, curators may adapt their practice ists to be productive and prolific. The Inter- to accommodate an online audience, lean- net allows the artist more autonomy, more ing toward photogenic artworks and exhi- agency over the dispersion and reception bition designs. But as artists and curators of their work. Artists can be more effectual anticipate the Internet as the ultimate exhi- than the gallery in cultivating attention and bition space, what function will the physical connecting with their audiences. Yet the gal- exhibition space serve? If installing works in lery continues to have the upper hand in con- galleries is only a means to an end—i.e. the noting value within the art market, and the documentation image—will the gallery be- white cube continues to be the quintessential come unnecessary? marker of art-world status. Traditionally, we think of the gallery as Most professional artists consider gallery having the following functions: providing representation as the primary route to and an exhibition space that allows the public provider of financial stability. Curators, too, to view art; offering the artist and the cura- rely on such institutions to fund their careers. tor exposure and access to their consumers; While online social networking provides the and acting as an intermediary between art- potential for artists to garner attention from ists and the market, providing artists with collectors and other sources of income, col- the potential to earn an income as a profes- lectors need to be convinced that their pur- sional. The first two functions, which con- chases will be secure investments. Gallery nect cultural producers representation and their with their audiences, contracts offer the art- can be executed much ist the credentials nec- more efficiently on the If installing works essary to be viewed as a Internet. Artists have worthwhile investment. the ability to create vast in galleries is only a Collectors depend on social networks online, means to the end of a trusted gallery directors promote themselves documentation image, and museum curators as and their artworks, and will galleries become professional arbitrators use social media plat- unnecessary? of market value. But if forms like Facebook, we no longer require the Instagram, and Tumblr physical presence of gal- to share images them- leries and their exhibition

36 LONEY ABRAMS spaces, could we imagine a virtual alternative guishable from one another, save for the art. that connotes the same level of market cred- The white cube retains its place in the docu- ibility? Do artists and curators need to be in- mentation image: Each photo has a white- cluded in physical exhibition spaces in order walled backdrop and minimal accompanying to create income-generating reputations, or text, mimicking the aesthetic of white-cube could their presence on a particular curated galleries. Situating works within a simulated website offer the same art-world imprimatur? white cube maintains the illusion of prestige As critic Michael Sanchez has pointed and credibility traditionally conveyed by the out, Contemporary Art Daily, a blog up- gallery space. Only now, the gallery-cum- dated daily with images of exhibitions from backdrop contextualizes the work not within around the world, “has effectively redirected physical space but within the democratized traffic away from individual gallery websites playing field of the Internet, while specifying and print publications to become a primary the images’ art-world context. Thus as these point of access for information about exhi- images are dispersed online and become sev- bitions.” Each exhibition is laid out identi- ered from their original sources, removed cally: the site’s home page offers the title of from their proverbial pedestals as they are the show accompanied by four images, the posted amid a nonhierarchical­ stream of non- venue, the artists, and the dates. Clicking on art content on the Tumblr dashboard or Face- the title brings the viewer to an impressive book newsfeed, their white-walled backdrop quantity of installation photos (each easily differentiates them from the heterogeneous shared with a button-click), sequenced to images around them and acts as signifier of provide wide installation views before nar- their high-art status. rowing down to specific objects and details. Though digital-documentation images This standardized format provides a system- are supplanting exhibition space and we can atic and formulaic experience of every exhi- even imagine the obsolescence of the exhibi- bition, and in some ways, usurps the role of tion space as it moves to the screen, the tradi- the curator by linearly directing the viewing tions and formalities of the gallery still hold experience.1 prominence. Indicative of the clean exclusiv- Though Contemporary Art Daily show- ity of private, difficult-to-access shows, the cases exhibitions from a huge pool of galleries, white cube has become a metaphor—not a photos on the site become almost indistin- physical necessity but a necessary signifier of institutional acceptance. Artwork does not require installation within the white cube, 1. Accessing work this way is undeniably different from experiencing art objects firsthand. But rather and the white cube does not require art ob- then debating the merits and limitations of experi- jects. Instead, art objects require the transi- encing art on the screen, this essay locates the exhi- bition, rather than the viewer, as subject. The online- tive value that the white cube implies. viewing phenomenon is taken as a given. Galleries’ sole purpose becomes clearer:

37 FLATLAND

They are reception spaces that redistribute as- ­locations, and then later presenting the doc- sociative status and function as arbitrators of umentation in a gallery. By using publicly ac- market value. The gallery’s primary role is not cessible venues like hotels, spas, and depart- as a place in which to view work—­openings ment stores, hotelart.us can produce frequent will be attended regardless of whether any art and site-specific exhibitions that last only is present—but as an authoritative resource as long as it takes to document them. Audi- for cultural clout. ences don’t view the exhibition as initially With the Internet as the most efficient installed in real life. Instead, the exhibition is means of art distribution, and the gallery as presented on Tumblr in conjunction with a the most efficient means of increasing one’s gallery reception, which presents projected cultural value, exhibitions located some- documentation of the original installation. where between the two can potentially reap In this case, the images themselves break free the benefits of both worlds. Hotelart.us, an from the homogenized aesthetic of the white ongoing project organized by me, Jonathan cube, and the white cube holds no conven- Stanish, and Ian Swanson, initially avoids tional art objects during the opening. The the white cube by installing and document- gallery is instead used strategically as means ing physical exhibitions staged in non-gallery of solidifying art-world ties and contextual- izing the project. These gallery installa- tions and receptions are also documented, creating multiple versions of the ex- hibition online, highlight- ing the mutability of repre- sentation. As artworks are understood through their digital representation, and because many different images can represent the same artwork, it becomes hard to locate a single manifestation of the work as “­authentic”—or as any Hotelart.us reception at Interstate Projects for the exhibition, “Cultural Affair.” An installation photo more valuable than any other version. The of Chino Amobi’s Illuminazioni, documented at the notion that an artwork has an intrinsic mean- Cosmopolitan Hotel, is projected on the wall. ing is undermined. By offering documenta- tion of the works originally installed offsite,

38 LONEY ABRAMS

Josh Citarella’s Eldorado Projects. One of multiple versions of the exhibition space, this image depicts the space as three times larger than its actual size. and then again as projected images within a constructed a three-walled exhibition space gallery, hotelart.us emphasizes that the ob- in the woods of upstate New York, invited jects themselves are not the arbiters of their artists to install works in the space, and con- own meaning, but instead they are defined ducted a photo shoot. Using editing soft- by a variety of versions that construct their ware, Citarella then created many versions meanings as they circulate the Web. of the exhibition by digitally altering the A recent project by Joshua Citarella fur- photographs. The result is a series of instal- ther develops the mutable exhibition and lation images that contradict one another: In creates multiple versions of not only the some instances, the walls of the room itself installed works, but also the gallery space are expanded to create the illusion of a larger in which they are installed. In Citarella’s El- space, in other cases the artworks themselves dorado Projects, the white cube becomes have been edited and rearranged. The viewer a stand-in for itself. Citarella and his peers is unable to discern which images, if any, are

39 FLATLAND unaltered representations of the space, mak- notes—likes and reblogs—on Contempo- ing the actual dimensions and layout of the rary Art Daily, followed by Ben Schumacher physical exhibition entirely irrelevant. and Carlos Reyes at Tomorrow, Toronto.) Disconnected from any specific insti- As long as the physical exhibition con- tution, location (the woods could be any tinues, curators will perhaps find it advanta- woods), or precedent, the freestanding geous to compose installations through the structure resembles the white cube while camera’s viewfinder, designing exhibitions inherently unable to perform its traditional that are photogenic from several static view- functions. But by using the exhibition space points, anticipating the JPEG as the ultimate as a jumping-off point rather than the end product. While current curatorial discourse product, Citarella expands the definition of continues to position the physical experi- the installation photo and suggests that the ence as the guiding impetus, exhibitions that physical version of any installation is only are photogenic will have significantly larger one of many. audiences than those designed with the sen- Though documentation imagery pres- sory experience of the physical viewer as its ents exciting opportunities for artists and primary subject. curators to manipulate and recontextualize While screens supplanting galleries may the traditional exhibition, this paradigmatic not bode well for performance or installation shift is not necessarily beneficial to every - artists, it may make such nonarchival works one. As screens replace exhibition spaces, archival. Works that last a matter of days, curators and artists who cater towards pho- minutes, or even seconds, become archival togenic aesthetics and online audiences will when photographed. Materials that melt, be rewarded. As digital images become cur- evaporate, expire, and decompose are viable rency, works that are difficult to translate as options for works that only need to exist long documentation are less valuable. While art- enough to be captured on camera. Of course works that are sensually rich (Ann Hamil- the documentation of ephemeral works is ton’s “the event of a thread” at Park Avenue not new with the Internet; artists have long Armory), performative (Marina Abramovi’s relied on the camera in order to material- “The Artist Is Present” at MoMA), participa- ize ephemeral works. But what makes post-­ tory (Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Gramsci Monu- internet documentation different is that ment” at Forest Houses in the Bronx) can cre- works aren’t documented to become suitable ate robust experiences IRL, the curator seek- for gallery exhibitions. Instead galleries are ing to generate limitless exposure is reward- used to document work to make it suitable ed best by showcasing works that are more for online reception. photogenic in nature. (During the month of Galleries are no longer the most effec- July, Wade Guyton, Guyton/Walker, Kelley tive means of art distribution. But they still Walker at Kunsthaus Bregenz got the most are the most effective facilitators to the art

40 LONEY ABRAMS market, as they connote prestige by acting as authorities on market value. But if the physi- cal exhibition is only a means of generating documentation imagery and associative sta- tus, can we imagine a more efficient means to this same end? Perhaps a different backdrop to the installation photo can be substituted, and artists and curators can circumvent the institution by forming online platforms and websites that replace the gallery as the deci- sive, value-granting authority. The emergence of “galleries” that oper- ated solely online could be next. Without the expenses demanded by the physical gallery (i.e. high rent, utility bills, property insur- ance, art insurance, building maintenance, etc.), an online gallery would need to gener- ate significantly less income to cover its cost of operations. With virtually no overhead ex- penses, these “galleries” could afford to offer their artists a significantly larger percentage of money from sales while generating the From Ben Schumacher and Carlos Reyes’s “A Salted Quarterly: Notes from the Why Axis,” same profit margin for themselves. at Tomorrow, in Toronto. Image accessed at Far from limiting artists and curators, ­Contemporary Art Daily. the demand for photographic documenta- tion encourages experimentation and pro- lific production. Work can be documented tribution, contextual mutability, and institu- and posted immediately, providing the artist tional commentary. As galleries have been with instant feedback from their audience the home of art objects, URLs are the homes via likes and comments and expanded op- of documentation images and could poten- portunity to represent and promote them- tially connote the prestige and cultural value selves, relying less on press generated by traditionally monopolized by the institution. market-driven galleries and institutions that URLs will stand side-by-side with the names restrict artists’ freedom to produce prolifi- of reputable galleries on artists’ curriculum cally and radically. The documentation im- vitae, and artists will be rewarded as much age is a fertile medium with ripe terrain, for their self-sufficiency as for their ability to offering immediate and potentially vast dis- game the gallery system. n

41

Get Off

by NICK FAUST

Artists and critics should combat stylistic prudishness, overcome guilt and shame, and embrace discourses promiscuously

The characterization of Warhol’s noncommercial work here as the product of some lower-class fey hobby served to position it as a kind of “fag” art, and Warhol himself as swishy queen whose artistic pretensions just couldn’t be taken seriously. This is an explicitly “homosexualized” construction of Warhol which dominates in the 1950s, both in relation to his work and his social persona, was instrumental in making Warhol an unsuitable candidate for the artist-subject position well into the early 1960s. Warhol was a window dresser in the mid-fifties and put together displays for Bonwit Teller and Tiffany’s ... Even though the Pop artist James Rosenquist, as well as Johns and Rauschenberg themselves, had also worked dressing windows, it was something that most artists tried to distance themselves from upon becoming successful as artists. Warhol, on the other hand, was famous for his commercial work and didn’t appear to be doing it just to survive. Thus Warhol appeared to be identified with window decorating in a way that other artists did not, and moreover, with a profession which was readily identifiable as a sissy occupation. —Gavin Butt,Between You and Me, Queer Disclosures in the New York Art World, 1948–1963

WHO’S CRUSHING ON whom? I like to present? Young artists are making due with think of artists’ usage of materials and themes minuscule studios, without past familiar in terms of flings, relationships, crushes and art-education facilities, wandering, trying marriages. What do artists make, with love to find all the necessary supplies, devoid of fresh in the air, in a new space when long- disposable income. Those first few casual term relationships have fallen apart or are friends with benefits in a new city, in a small nonexistent, with no stakes beyond the cramped apartment that lends itself to only

43 GET OFF half your sexual imagination. piece, the Facebook posts, tweets, and vines Some artists have a type: big-breasted that surround such work, the gossip about blondes, stocky Italian-Americans, neurotic the work in the bathrooms of the gallery and catty introverts who just want to stay in all the outside during the smoke breaks and back time, older professorial types to help combat in the patios and bars after the opening, the daddy issues. Other artists don’t want that. press releases both in unchecked email and They want fun fun fun and take it as it comes, listserv format, and the 10,000 art-opening throwing themselves into whatever turns invites that networked artists receive each them on in the moment. day on social media, the write-up of the Art criticism, like an upset parent, often work, the studio visits, the sketching out of passes moral judgment on this promiscu- the ideas, the conversations that influence ity, scolding, judging indiscretions. There and sustain the practices—all these are rich are attempts at keeping art pure, delineating and evocative and can provide tremendous what is what, and who is who, and where the energy and meaning to a work and extend its boundaries are. Or in the attempt to redefine life out beyond. the boundaries, there is a tendency to vio- Artists are keen to this, that every stage lently sabotage what came before if it doesn’t of the work’s life is up for play and that there smoothly fit into the new regime. is no such thing as a fixed neutral, ultimately But it’s crucial to encourage brief brushes,­ true iteration of the work. In line with refus- longed-for encounters, and magical mo- ing criticism’s moralistic impulses, I want to ments that pass into the night to be brokenly outline the pleasures that manifest them- remembered in the hungover daze of the next selves through the sites of production—the morning. Flings, one night stands, and vaca- constant onrush and stimulation of daily life, tion hook-ups are just as ripe. For artists who the influence of the day jobs artists carry on tie the knot—explosive both the making and the divorces, whimpered documentation and pre- muttering and weepy sentation, the opening withdrawals, quiet bitter Art writing must draw up of the game, and the unspoken tension. heroic attempts to by- Likewise, art writ- new connections, pass shame. ing must attempt to weaving in the hushed I think of people get- draw new connections, talk that always gets ting made up and fabu- weaving in unpublished, spoken but generally lous, ready for a night hushed talk that always not on the record on the town, scoffing gets spoken but general- at such prudes who ad- ly not on the record. The vise a more “natural” documentation of the and “authentic” way of

44 NICK FAUST

­representing themselves—their elaborate play and fluidity as they cycle from situation to situation, conversation to conversation, ad- justing on the fly and letting themselves take in the experience while also manipulating it. Just as readily, in a flush moment at the gym, the activity of bodybuilders springs to mind. They are in a constant state of sexual satisfaction as they tear down their muscles, letting the body tremble and quiver and blood come rushing in, the everlasting pump. Bodybuilding has been transformed from its European roots as an attempt to mirror with the body the Greco-Roman sculptures being excavated in the 19th century and installed in the new museums. Early bodybuilders would sneak through the museum and tape-measure the sculptures head to toe, formulating the Bronzer. Andrew Gorrie/Dominion Post correct proportions according to wrist size. Contemporary bodybuilders are beyond such concerns and allegiances to an imag- ined history. Supplements, drugs, new ma- chines, and other practices have allowed for with their presentation and documentation bodybuilders to obliterate the past standards in mind that I consider Michael Sanchez’s ar- and achieve a new, more abstract result. They gument about the impact of the iPhone on art adjust their schedules in opposition to the exhibition. In “2011,” an essay in the Summer socially approved distribution of hours and 2013 issue of Artforum, he discusses the way home in and work one specific aspect of such devices and image-aggregator sites like themselves to exhaustion. After such elongat- Contemporary Art Daily interact with and ed erotic performances, they step out under inform contemporary artworks. Art is rap- the bright lights, covered in extreme bronzer, idly referencing itself, speeding up the pre- to bring out the muscles that look incredibly vious print- and exhibition-bound seasonal cartoonish under any other circumstances schedule that put forth the studio evidence of but the bright lights of onstage competition. trends only every few months. Now, as San- It is with bodybuilders and their ingestion, chez notes, things get posted when finished consumption, refinement, and enhancement and shared instantaneously, and as a result, of past strategies and the conscious toying similar artists working with similar materials

45 GET OFF or similar ideas can no longer be tied to a eu- juicy tidbits and romantic affairs, I think of reka moment: A-ha! This must be the zeitgeist Warhol, who was always up to hear the dirt if these unconnected figures are all doing it once! on the previous day and chat at great lengths Instead, the proliferation of work on the about the things around him. Through War- Internet makes it easily digestible and citable. hol, the shame and sexual guilt of commercial New practices, in Sanchez’s view, instantly work is flattened and laid to rest. Also through devour themselves. I think it is necessary to him, the everyday, the sensational, the banal flip the destructive, gluttonous connotations “low talk,” such as gossip and monosyllabic of devouring and focus on the more positive utterances and the carefully crafted consid- connotations of the word, that emphasis on erations of the artist’s body and appearance, avid enjoyment. What is so appealing about can be claimed and raised in stature. such fast distribution is how the institution- A sexual response, arousal, and enrapture alized approaches that once suffocated, puri- in the materials and rituals can form an art- fied, cleansed, and straightened up the circu- ist’s work and structure what it draws from. lation of art are now infused with the chit- Artists are giving themselves over and open- chat and gossip of social life, and the work ing themselves up to those things that stick is tossed out onto the dance floor, knocked out, that linger, that give pause, that provide down from the balcony overlooking the both evident visible pleasure and inwardly- frenzy. It isn’t, “Oh my, check out that stoic kept satisfaction, that they can’t get out of hottie—that removed, super-distant instal- their head, that horrify them but they come lation at Kunsthalle Wien. Man, I wish I back to, that humiliate and punish, that build could ask him if he wants to dance, but I’m and nurture, that annoy and tease, that they so nervous, and he’s so up there.” Instead, in find themselves needing more and more of. both the quick-feed call and response and These are precisely what is so invigorating riffing and sharing, it is about today’s art. shooting a flirty raise of Am I shocked that the eyebrow, adjusting multiple people are get- your posture according- The attempts to ting excited about and ly, and striking up a con- put one group up engaging Axe, its body versation and making sprays, shampoos and the advance. The stilting above another deodorant? No, Axe is and privileging, the at- are falling apart. insane, its projections tempts to put one group Everybody is so ridiculous, the smells up above another, are fucking everybody. so pungent and eas- falling apart. Everybody ily dispersible, catching is fucking everybody. a trace of it when you In thinking of such aren’t even ready, ­getting

46 NICK FAUST

Dyson Hot + Cool Fan Ped Egg

smacked by those omnipresent fantastical a ­hurried, last-minute assignment. No shame video clips running in a constant stream on- for the sculptor achieving bliss as she gazes line. Axe is so blunt and in your face that an out at the perfection that is the Dyson Hot + artist was eventually going to have to go up Cool fan or for the painter as the hairs on his and flirt a little bit with it. neck stand on end as he takes in a perfectly Artists don’t have to sign a mortgage with luminous, kinky kids’ plush toy. No guilt for the things they work with, and it is perfectly the performance collective as they assimilate normal to kind of hate the people you’re at- the back-and-forth exchanges between pro tracted to. Gosh, she’s so wonderful and smart wrestlers and their audience. and well-read and funny, but she’s a horrible The little welds on the underneath of the drunk and she farts in her sleep. Or: he’s such a chair, the otherworldly quality of the Ped Egg belittling and abusive asshole, but I kind of need suspended in some floating advertisement, that deprecation in my life right now, it is hot, I the catalogs for car shows, all those marvel- can’t help myself, I know it isn’t “normal” but ous oddities that are liberated from art’s guilt it is working so well right now. Please keep the complex, strutting flamboyantly through stories coming, and the encounters memorable. such longed for and un-actualized concerns. There should be no guilt in the little tricks and joys that the photographer takes as she shoots yet another wedding or an- THERE’S SOMETHING TO be said for the other shampoo commercial. No guilt for the repetitious, paying-the-bill qualities of get- studio assistant as he minutely changes the ting the thing right, getting it to look exactly slightest tone of the shadow in Photoshop on how it needs to look, and making sure that

47 GET OFF it looks damn good and not dejected. That seems to be an undercurrent of the sculpture that wants to cleanse you, as it builds on the minimalist introduction of plastics, resins, metal, and other industrial materials in their stark punctuality—slickness and play with space along with the straight-out fling with branded body products, as configured by a generation of artists who aren’t guilted into previous high-low, worthy-unworthy bina- ries, using the commercial skills and craft that they acquire in their day jobs. Artists working today don’t own this fact enough. They’re still too meek about it. America always had a Warhol problem when L’Oreal for Kids bottle he was alive, in that his flamboyance was too much for some folks who preferred their art- ists, like Johns and Rauschenberg, to deny their commercial activities and keep them- selves pure from such daily occurrences, tak- ing up residency in certifying institutions and circulation. Artists are getting more that still believed art was above everything honest about what turns them on across the else. There’s still this leftover anti-market board, and this includes browsing, looking, stigma that sneers at both those who sell and staging representations, and resharing— those pay the bills in less pure and whole- owning the way you like to browse, the way some fashion. As if the only way to be a valid you like images to look when you see them, artist is go to pro, shuffling through the resi- hiding the muffintop you’ve got creeping dency cycle, taking adjunct positions with over the side of your pants by wearing high- only one semester of your life planned at any rise jeans, putting on a little cover-up, turning moment, hoping for some fantasy placement your good side to the camera, standing next so you can be above the daily fray. The shame to someone smaller than you in every pic- of selling, and the shame of admitting that ture, making the lights a little bluer in every you might find certain qualities of your day photo, obscuring the information inscribed capable of being relevant to the things that on the situation, making pointed removals, art struggles with is still taboo, amazingly. and any other playful actions. Such practices apply not only to the pro- Sticking up one’s nose at practices pre- duction of work but also to documentation viously rejected as serious art—fashion

48 NICK FAUST

­photography, car painting, furniture and bodily sexual qualities of fruit. Everyone pro- website design, among other commer- ceeded to measure their dicks against said cial trades—seems further and further re- bottles, terming the new discovery aL’Oreal moved with each new MFA class, as young boner, each one of us with a different bottle. artists let more in and open themselves to wider possibilities. Although I’m not an artist, there’s a per- THE WAY ARTISTS actually talk about sonal story that plays in my head when I view a spaces, casually at lunches and on the way lot of work that touches on these arousals. I’m to things, has always been in my experience reminded of an experience I had as a tween closer to the language used to describe mu- at a summer camp where my mom worked sic: Things are harsh, ethereal, fuzzy, stark, as a nurse. It was the first week, everyone still amplified, severe, ringing. Out of context, if sunfree, completely new to each other, feeling you missed the first few words, you might out the situation, the potential for incredibly think they were discussing guitar pedals or a awkward encounters rampant. One day we all set of sounds on a drum machine. waited in line to get in the showers with our Music hasn’t traditionally been as reli- towels and Adidas- or Nike-brand flip-flops, ant on proximity to or participation in cer- and talk inevitably turned to dicks, in all of tifying institutions in the way visual art has. their varieties. A producer from What amused the middle of no- me about this not- where can throw up so-uncommon a track on Sound- encounter was cloud after being the eventual turn inspired by some in the conversa- other, more-well- tion to shampoo. connected artist Everyone at the and quickly enter time had the new into the dialogue. fish-like bottles of Visual art L’Oréal for Kids, should be jealous of with its emphasis this fluid accessibil- on the no-tears, ity, these leveling no-pain qualities maneuvers. Kids far of its chemical from the art capitals makeup and con- can give themselves stant allusions to Way Huge Electronics WHE401 Swollen Pickle mkII a playful legibility the earthy and Jumbo Fuzz Guitar Effects Pedal that is constantly

49 GET OFF

Alex Da Corte, Head, 2013

up to be teased out and undermined. It isn’t act over another? Sure, some work might be realistic for young would-be gallerists to ac- underwhelming in person, in comparison to quire a space like the De Vleeshal, but with the space that looked so big onscreen, but the a little paint and lighting know-how, they can work is just as true in the studio as it is in the transform their crappy garage, bombed-out gallery, as it is on a website, as it is in a book, basement, or parent’s attic into their own gal- as it is on a phone, as it is during pedicure lery space that is gonna look great all done up and manicure parties, as it is when barely re- and out there. membered and floating as an example to be Why privilege one level of the art speech used in a conversation that never quite makes

50 NICK FAUST

Carson Fisk-Vittori,Nature Window, 2013

it out, as it is in a minuscule press clipping and where, and for how long. I’m curious to that some art historian will dig up a hundred watch it as it further announces its own no- years from now while writing a dissertation. tions of identity and desire, comes to terms Each new iteration allows for an unlimited with the pictorial and critical vocabularies it amount of possibilities for artists to use, to draws from and turns them inside-out again extend and pause and speed up and burrow and again, fighting prudishness every step of in and rewind and cut and paste and reverse the way. and queer and undo and build upon, and as such, none should be shut down. I think of this new work as coming to grips IN “2011” MICHAEL SANCHEZ also dis- with its sexual inclinations, its desires, its cusses abstract paintings that he says gain wants and needs, its fetishes, how it wants it, specific qualities due to specific tones and and when, and from whom, and with whom, colors in their relation to the screen. These

51 GET OFF

Samuel François, Mighty Blue #1, #2, #3, 2012

medium-specific concerns might seem a nos- climax that doesn’t let anyone else in). And talgic longing for an imaginary time when art its emphasis on opticality is especially seen was clearly concerned with the “right” issues as masturbatory, as this is tied to the accusa- before the great beheading and subjugation tion that such work refuses to self-critique of opticality, but such work is just as sexually and police its status as a commodity object, courageous as the meme art and neosurreal- that sensory experience that isn’t as rigorous, ism discussed above in its refusal to acknowl- respectable, and healthy in a relationship as edge pronouncements on its death as a viable the experiences tied to the other senses. It is practice, such painting owns its own shamed too easy and too limited, and doesn’t interact sexual stature. When critics deride such with anything but itself, jerking off and ac- work, they frequently employ the language quiring hairy palms. long used to attack masturbation. It is overly It is necessary to rescue masturbation selfish and inward looking, playing in a cul- and masturbatory art from stigmatization, de-sac with clearly definable ends and goals as these critiques and others like them at- and a limited focus (the most boring rise and tempt to shut off the possibilities such work

52 NICK FAUST can have, both in past incarnations and new practices. Masturbation is often said to stem from psychological weakness and moral decrepi- tude, or to be caused by a lack of “healthy” relations with others. It’s depicted as always a rote, banal and repetitious event. This is bullshit. Masturbation can provide its own intensely empowering and enlightening and inspiring experiences. The joys of masturbat- ing in the shower, masturbating when you have all the time in the world, when you’re rushed, when you’re all alone in the apart- ment, when there’s someone in the next room, when you’re imagining something in your head, when you’re looking at an image, when you aid the process with other fluids and devices, imagined assemblages. Masturbation isn’t interesting only to the person who is masturbating. I think of friends masturbating to Skype screens for their part- Jean-Baptiste Bernadet. ners across the country. The play and teasing, Untitled (Shuffleboard), 2013 that exciting back and forth, the way your legs tighten, how the sweat glistens on your stom- ach, how you bite your lip, the slight noises you make, the arching of your back, the way the pace quickens and slows, the way you toss flings, one night stands, quiet flirtations, and turn and throw the pillows around. But long-distance relationships, ­marriages, and for the masturbatory artist, the audience need multiple partners. Far from announcing the not be literal but can be implied. death of a medium or signifying only man- A lot of masturbation verges on more con- nerist pranks, as often is claimed about the ventional sexual exchanges, just as there is sex stylistic shifts of protean artists like Warhol, that verges on masturbation. Events can flu- Picabia, and Richter, the back and forth in- idly circulate back and forth between the two, dicates a ravenous, all encompassing appetite and open up new potentials. An artist should that can’t be satisfied, that longs for desires enjoy both, blend them, and engage however still yet to be fulfilled. the hell they want, just as artists must have I hope artists stay horny. n

53 54 Break It Down

by TEJU COLE

Iconoclasm carries within it two paradoxical traits: thoroughness and fury

IN A DRY landscape, men work. With ­begins to split. Two other men wander near axes, hammers, and other tools, they break the wall that has just come down. In the stones. It is hard work, from the looks of it, sand around their feet are large clay pots, but they do it seriously. They are enthusi- and with effortless little kicks, like bored astic, and work as a team. Something is be- boys, they break the pots. Stone, mud, clay: ing cleared away, perhaps in preparation for Patiently they break everything down. And something else to be built. A small walled a little distance away, behind the safety of a house, made of hardened mud bricks and metal gate, some people watch the men at just a little taller than human height, comes work. The watchers let the work continue crashing down. When the dust settles, the undisturbed. They do nothing, are able to men, finding the large chunks of rubble do nothing, about the demolition in pro- unsatisfactory, reduce them further. With cess, the demolition of old Sufi shrines. a pick, one man hits a flat concrete slab on Between the workers and their watchers, which inscriptions are visible. At first, the there is a difference in power. An automatic pick glances, unequal to the task. But soon gun, resting on some stones, ignored but the slab is crossed by hairline cracks and unignorable, indicates that difference.

55 Frans Hogenberg, The Calvinist Iconoclastic Riot of August 20, 1566

In August 1566, an angry Calvinist odic outbreaks of iconoclasm all through crowd in the Flemish town of Steenvoorde European history—in Byzantine times, and attacked the pilgrimage church of Sint-­ then with renewed frequency in the age of Laurensklooster, destroying its art and ar- ­Reformation—there had never been any- chitecture, and killing several of its priests. In thing quite like the “Beeldenstorm,” the the weeks that followed, the violence spread Dutch “storm of statues” of the late 16th cen- to the major Flemish cities of Antwerp and tury. Sir Richard Clough, a Welsh merchant Ghent. And though there had been peri- then living in Antwerp, was an eyewitness to

56 TEJU COLE the destruction, and in a letter to London, he where the Buddhas were, where they stood wrote of that he saw: in their graceful embodiment of Gandhara “All the churches, chapels and houses art, in their fine blend of Greek and Buddhist of religion utterly defaced, and no kind of artistic ideals, there now stands only silence, thing left whole within them, but broken emptiness, a pair of monumental alcoves. and utterly destroyed, being done after Iconoclasm is nominally about theol- such order and by so few folks that it is to ogy. Images which represent the wrong be marvelled at.” He described the Church ideas must be expunged. But why be so fu- of Our Lady in Antwerp as looking “like rious about ideas? And, so, how are we to hell with above 10,000 churches burning understand the ongoing destruction of Sufi and such a noise as if heaven and earth had shrines in the north of Mali? Ansar Dine, the got together, with falling of images and rebel group that now controls Timbuktu, be- beating down of costly works such sort that lieves itself to be doing the will of God. The the spoil was so great that a man could not United Nations doesn’t matter, Ansar Dine well pass through the church.” has said, UNESCO is irrelevant, only God’s Images are powerful. They can bring peo- law matters. The locals are helpless, and hor- ple into such a pitch of discomfort that vio- rified. Short of witnessing grievous bodily lence ensues, and iconoclasm carries within harm, few things are as astonishing as seeing itself two paradoxical traits: thoroughness the casual, physical destruction of what one and fury. The men (they are in Timbuktu) in holds sacred. their hardworking but boyish ways, and with Surely, the Muslim piety of “the city of their automatic weapons, are a good exam- 333 saints” (as Timbuktu is known) should ple of this thoroughness, and this cheerful, correspond to the Muslim piety of Ansar impish fury. Dine, should it not? So far, eight mauso- In early 2001, in the Bamyan valley of leums have been broken, many tombs de- central Afghanistan, a pair of monumental stroyed, and the rebels are determined to statues of the Buddha, intricately carved into continue the destruction. Their version of the sandstone of a cliff in the 6th century, Islam—Salafist, fundamentalist—consid- were dynamited and reduced to rubble. The ers the syncretic practices of Malian Sufism, larger of the statues was 180 feet high. The with its veneration of saints and incorpora- destruction was not easy: It took weeks. This tion of vernacular practices, haram. There act of straightforward iconoclasm was done is no direct Koranic proscription on image- at the direct order of Mullah Omar, leader of making, but the Traditions of the Prophet, the Taliban. He had thought the Buddhas had the Hadiths, object to using images to usurp some tourism value in 1999, but he changed God’s creative power. From those Hadiths his mind less than two years later, declaring come such narratives as the one in the 9th them idols. And so the dynamite was laid, and century “Book of Idols”:

57 BREAK IT DOWN

in their language, and according to their pre- When on the day he conquered Mecca, conversion customs of veneration. the Apostle of God appeared before the Ka’bah, he found idols arrayed There is in iconoclasm an emotional con- around it. Thereupon he started to tent that is directly linked to the iconoclasts’ pierce their eyes with the point of own psychology. The theological pretext for his arrow, saying, ‘Truth is come and falsehood vanished. Verily, falsehood is image destruction is that images are power- a thing that vanisheth [Koran 17:81].’ less, less than God, ineffective as a source of He then ordered that they be knocked succor, and therefore disposable. But in reali- down, after which they were taken out ty, iconoclasm is motivated by the iconoclast’s and burned. profound belief in the power of the image be- ing destroyed. The love iconoclasts have for On French radio, Sanda Ould Boumana, icons is a love that dare not speak its name. a spokesman for Ansar Dine, expressed their Iconoclastic hostility is complex. It ex- activity in strikingly similar terms: “When presses itself in different ways all through the Prophet entered Mecca, he said that all history. But what is generally true of icono- the mausoleums should be destroyed. And clastic movements is that they are never that’s what we’re repeating.” And that is why, about theology alone. They include politics, more than a thousand years after he died, the struggles for power, the effort to humiliate an tomb of the saint Sidi Mahmoudou has been enemy, and a demonstration of iconoclasts’ destroyed and desecrated. own neuroses. Behind iconoclastic bravado A peculiarity of the Timbuktu icono- is a terror of magic, a belief in dead saints no clasm is that these shrines are architectural less than that of iconophiles and, crucially, a rather than representationally sculptural. historical anxiety that, in the Timbuktu case, They are generally modest in size, and usually is about presenting the bona fides of Ansar made of mud. There is little of the opulence Dine to its Wahhabi models in Saudi Arabia that might have maddened the 16th century and to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Flemish mob, and none of the lifelike mime- That which doesn’t speak dumbfounds. sis of human form that offended sensibilities After all, who can tell what such objects are in the Bamyan Valley. In Timbuktu, a once thinking? Best to destroy the inscrutable, the wealthy trading city, in a place once fabled for ancient, if one is to truly usher in a pure new its wealth and learning, now swallowed up world. So, the invaders continue their work in by the Sahel, these mausoleums are expres- Timbuktu with enthusiasm and good cheer, sions of local practice: simple and old beliefs smashing pots, breaking bricks, rattling at the in a land of griots and marabouts, the kind doors of the mosque. It takes a lot of work of syncretism common to all the big world to silence silent objects. But already it is clear religions, owing as much to universal edicts that not only the people watching from be- as to what works for the people in their land, hind the gate are consumed with fear. n

58 59 Giants of Boston

by MARYAM MONALISA GHARAVI

Face-covering vexes geopolitical divisions and reads as one thing: anti-American

The Giant of Boston by Os Gêmeos, Dewey Square, Boston. Photo by Geoff Hargadon Photo by Sarah Dickerson

60 MARYAM MONALISA GHARAVI

BOSTON IS A city perennially self-conscious about Boston’s conservative art fixtures them- about public art. A 2012 Boston Phoenix cover selves. After all, the commissioned works by story examined why such an alarming num- the artists were generously funded by multi- ber of young artists leave a city ranked in the ple senior, prestigious institutions. The twins top 10 for national arts funding. (The Boston are internationally hailed (their presence was Phoenix itself folded not long after that publi- described by the Boston Globe as “kind of cation.) When it comes to large-scale works like the Rolling Stones coming and giving a in the public domain, the city tends to favor free concert on the Greenway”), thus­ a less exogenous creations rather than the home- “controversial” choice in and of themselves, grown. The accusation that the city is risk- even though they originate from—heaven averse and WASP-y descends from what Mi- forbid—a Latin American nation. chael Braithwaite called an “age-old attitude Despite the great care taken to select central to the very culture of Boston itself: a bonafide art stars and avoid anything “overtly city where philanthropy as historically been political” (as curator Pedro Alonzo comment- dedicated to institutions and fine art, rather ed), the Dewey Square mural managed to strike than to visual art and artists that push bound- a ripple of trouble. The story is said to have un- aries.” More important, the elimination of folded like this. Fox News posed a question to rent control by voter referendum in 1994 en- its online audience, encouraging viewers to air sured that tenable housing for artists, the vast their thoughts on the station’s Facebook page: majority of whom piece together low wages, “This is a new mural on a Big Dig ventilation would be dispiritingly low. building. What does it look like to you?” The The most publicly discussed artwork on Facebook comment thread has since been re- the heels of that 2012 report was “The Giant moved, though some screen grabs remain. In of Boston,” a large mural by Os Gêmeos (Por- great numbers, spectators explicitly likened tuguese for “the twins”). Otávio and Gustavo the mural’s subject to a terrorist. Pandolfo are Brazilian brothers from São The bright-yellow, head-wrapped fig- Paulo who co-produce all their work, both ure in the mural was interpreted by hundreds sanctioned and illicit, as the eponymous of Bostonians as an al-Qaeda operative, Bart twins, signing their entire jointly bred oeu- Simpson disguised as a mujahideen fighter, vre as a single artist. Os Gêmeos’ local work the wife of a terrorist, a “towel head Islamist comprised three murals around the city and holding a gun,” an “allah [sic] loving unit- an exhibition at the Institute of Contempo- ed states hating individual,” a “gay ninja,” a rary Art, the most prominent artistic institu- Taliban fighter, a “tribute to Obama’s birth- tion in Boston. day,” and in “seriously poor taste.” The Pan- The story of how the brothers’ first major dolfo brothers rejoined that their effigy was solo showcases in the United States came to a boy wearing pajamas and clothing around be located in the city reveals little of substance his visage. Lest it be claimed that the public

61 GIANTS OF BOSTON

Screen grab by Steve Annear

62 MARYAM MONALISA GHARAVI

­comments were cherry-picked, Metro Bos- Moreover, while the most obvious parts ton reported that the post spawned more than of the controversy between the art institu- 600 racially centered or bigoted comments. tions backing the artwork and the artwork’s The ACLU of Massachusetts intervened to detractors staged themselves in the city, the caution against the impulse to “equate all unseen/unseeable and unspoken/unsayable head coverings with terrorism.” The deadly relationship between the artwork and its spa- shooting of a Sikh temple in southern Wis- tial site was omitted from the discussion. consin by a self-avowed skinhead had taken Back in 2011 the Occupy Boston (OB) place just one day earlier. popular assembly chose Dewey Square as the Perhaps the most honest and frank ex- site of their encampment. OB never sought change about the mural took place between explicit permission to occupy the wide patch a child and a reporter: of grass in the shadow of the U.S. Federal Re- serve from Dewey’s private proprietors, the CHILD: It’s scary like a Batman. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conser- REPORTER: Why is it scary? CHILD: Because it has something vancy. In October 2011, on the heels of police covered. And its nose is covered with warnings of a first raid, the Rose Kennedy is- a blanket. sued a statement: “No one asked for permis- sion. No one gave permission.” That initial The “controversy” surrounding the fig- nonparticipation, which was later rescinded, ure in the mural should not be dismissed seemed an implicit go-ahead while encamp- just because it appears wholesale-manufac- ment was still a part of OB’s main strategy. tured by a baiting local Fox News station. Leaving aside the smaller mural at the An op-ed by the ICA’s current director, Jill luxury boutique Revere Hotel—formerly Medvedow, claimed that “the critical is- the Charles Street jail—or the collaborative sue raised by Os Gêmeos’ mural is not an mural with RYZE, Todd James, and Caleb aesthetic one; rather I believe it is an issue Neelon in Union Square, the Os Gêmeos of the media declaring a controversy rath- mural in Dewey Square received explicit er than reporting on one.” By default that permission. In addition to the private fund- claim dismisses the porous political fron- ing that afforded its creation, cooperation tiers between aesthetic choices in art and between the Massachusetts Department of the sphere of public life (and curiously so, Transportation, the Boston Art Commis- for artists whose work has been politically sion, and the City of Boston sanctioned the charged since its inception on the streets). use of the front-facing ventilation building Whether or not Medvedow intends it, the in Dewey Square. The permit proved a pain- statement diminishes the value of the work less formality. as little more than a brightening rejuvena- The city of Boston failed to discuss what tion of the drab downtown financial district. public discourses are allowable, seeable, and

63 GIANTS OF BOSTON sayable. A counterargument might defend declined (rather wisely) to discuss The Giant­ the poor patches of grass and shrubbery of Boston mural or its chosen location, save for the Conservancy cited in its protectionist a memorandum that they believe in “peace” pamphlets during the OB debacle, but it is and “imagination.” The crouching, face-­ clear that the city veritably bent backward to covered yellow boy epitomizes the seedling approve this privately funded, publicly dis- of dissent and in that sense the mural seems played artwork and did not allow ventilation to speak (though its mouth is obfuscated) for issues to get in the way. One might say that itself, whether or not the artists directly ad- art is politically innocuous (and the ICA dress the fact that the repression brought to director implied as much in declaring the bear on Dewey Square has been re-signified mural a manufactured noncontroversy). It by his presence. is permissible to say so. Yet implicit in that The question of the semiotic effect of assertion is a resignation. One must resign the masked figure remains, and that is what oneself to a certain kind of everyday nihil- aroused the ire of hundreds (and at least ism: People were beaten and forcefully ex- one young Batman-fearing boy) when they pelled from a narrow geography of grass that described the little giant as a terrorist. The now boasts a mural from one of the most fa- effect differs not only transregionally (the mous art collectives in the world, and in the brothers have painted several murals but this end, it did not matter. is the first in the U.S.) but also transcultur- ally. What does the covered face of a lone fig- ure mean in Brazil versus Boston? Why this I TAKE NO pleasure in making a distinc- specific figure in an American mural as op- tion between The Giant of Boston mural itself posed to other very recent Os Gêmeos cre- and the significance the artwork engendered ations, such as their collaborative work with (or failed to engender) in its current loca- Aryz in Lodz, Poland? tion. Inadvertently journeying alongside a Locally, Mayor Thomas Menino infa- fellow traveler, I have tracked the cartoon- mously railed during the OB encampment ish, bright-yellow Os Gêmeos icon from the that he would “not tolerate civil disobedi- cool safety of museums to outside the statu- ence in the city of Boston.” The term anar- esque walls of the Teatro Municipal in São chist was thrown in as a hooliganist slur, as it Paulo to a few subway stops away in Dewey cyclically is, to encode lawlessness, mayhem, Square. At each site—private or public, in- and general disarray. At least since Seattle door or outdoor, small-scale or large—the 1999, political activists of all ethnic and class figure at the center of their work resonated backgrounds faced suspicion, and occasion- with a complicated emotional mixture of ju- ally arrest, for masking their faces. Covering bilation and mourning. one’s head or face arouses deep and immedi- The Pandolfo brothers themselves have ate suspicion in contemporary society. Think

64 MARYAM MONALISA GHARAVI of the use of head covering for religious—­ the revolutionary movements of the 1960s particularly Islamic—observance. Think of and ’70s, but to the equation of the masked the use of face covering in strict interpreta- face with lessened humanness. Viewed this tions of Islamic practice. Think of Trayvon way, one can see how The Giant of Boston Martin in his “street” clothes, blamed post- can simultaneously be aggregated with a mortem for his own death because of not only negative-marked identity (“towel-headed being black but having also worn a hoodie. terrorist”) and emptied of political agency In Brazil face coverage highlights two (an occupier in the shadow of the Federal things: the importance of not being iden- Reserve building). tified (in a police-media alliance where the arrested are widely filmed and photo- graphed, their images distributed as mug NOW THAT THE mural is going to be pre- shots on national television before so much maturely pulled down—many months shy of as a formal accusation) and a way to draw its original 18-month designated time frame attention to the invisibility of the poor. This and for reasons unconvincingly given—it is not a matter of inference: Os Gêmeos seems appropriate to revisit the rancor- have explicitly questioned the Brazilian inducing icon after the Boston marathon flag’s motto (drawn from French positivist bombing. An unorthodox view of history Auguste Comte) of “order and progress” might cast the mural as inadvertently prefig- in their images. Their yellow and brown uring a great local terror. That the terror was animated figures wearing tattered clothes masked—though the violent diegesis alleg- and covering their faces are inconvenient edly staged by the Tsarnaev brothers never thorns to a long civilizational project. involved a masked spectacle—speaks more The overwhelmingly negative disposition to the contours of American imaginations toward the mural reveals how Latin Ameri- about occluded “others” than it does about can and Middle Eastern visual typologies art. That the artwork was able to shed light of face-covering— the disregarded poor of on such leanings—that it acted as a surface Brazil, the Zapatistas of Mexico, the fedayeen on which deeply lodged wishes and fears ma- of Palestine—collapse into a muddled same- terialized—was its greatest intervention. ness in the eyes of a suspicious beholder. The The Rolling Stone profile of Dzhokhar racial and sartorial coding that vexes geopo- Tsarnaev made mention of two kinds of in- litical divisions reassigns them as one thing, scriptions on walls. The first was inside the and one thing only: anti-American. boat where Tsarnaev hid from the police: This tendency to see only the rep- “when investigators finally gained access to etition of the covered face (repetition be- the boat, they discovered a jihadist screed cause it resists representation) lends not scrawled on its walls.” The other was in Tsar- only to the erasure of history, particularly naev’s high school: “There are at least 50

65 GIANTS OF BOSTON

nationalities represented at the city’s one public high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, whose motto—written on walls, murals and school-course catalogs, and proclaimed over the PA system—is ‘Opportunity, Diversity, Respect.’ ” Neither inscription is a work of art, of course, and both were contained in a semiprivate domain. However, the cov- er of Rolling Stone—thought to depict a boy-giant terrorist in a gossamer haze— sparked such hysteria that the mayor of Boston publicly denounced it, several chain stores refused to carry it, and the editors resorted to prefacing the profile with a disclaimer. Soon after, a disgrun- tled 25-year veteran of the Massachusetts State Police released a tactical police pho- tograph of Tsarnaev in defiance of the Rolling Stone cover, to “counter the mes- sage that it conveys” and to unveil “the real face of terrorism, not the handsome, confident young man shown on the maga- zine cover.” The police photo showed the young man’s face in the bulls-eye of a laser sniper, head lowered and bloodied hands raised. The sniper photo of Tsarnaev was presumably leaked in order to give com- fort to his victims, not unlike the ideology that undergirds “Boston Strong,” the city’s adopted moniker after the blasts. The original cover portrait of Tsarnaev is indeed telling, but not because it glam- orizes or idealizes its subject. If anything, Detail from Rolling Stone cover, it has the neutrality of a self-portrait, a August 1, 2013, issue surface where deeply lodged wishes and fears materialize. n

66 Creative Tyranny

By ROB HORNING

CAN YOU CALL yourself an artist and Artists’ self-important claims an activist at the same time? Or is the art- for their work makes them ists’ personal brand always in the way? 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, Ben Davis’s worse than useless for political new collection of essays, addresses these activism questions and other similar ones with an admirable clarity that invites debate. In these pieces, Davis, a Marxist art critic and executive editor of Artinfo.com, shows little overt interest in policing the bound- aries of art—there are virtually no assess- ments of the aesthetic value of particular artworks. Yet he ends up preserving a nebulous view of “great” art’s suppos- edly objective appeal that undermines his apparent political concerns. Art ac- crues meaning via its audience, which is inevitably structured by social relations. To imagine that its value can come from anywhere else is to obfuscate the central- ity of class that Davis is otherwise eager to bring to light. Class relations are central to Davis’s attempt to rethink the relationship be- tween art and political action. Artists are eager to identify themselves with—and Ben Davis even lay claim to—efforts like the Oc- 9.5 Theses on Art and Class cupy movement, but their involvement, Haymarket Books, 224 pages Davis argues, muddles protest and de- rails organizational efforts more often

67 CREATIVE TYRANNY than not. When artistic practice is posited as ture forms—a professional requirement— a politics, it tends to emphasize individual ef- can as often make it a distraction from the fort and distract movements from pursuing needs of an actual movement, which are after the sort of social change that could benefit all collective, welding together tastes of all that large portion of the population not in- kinds.” Artists must produce their reputa- terested in living their lives as art. tion as a singular commodity on the mar- What gets in the way of artists’ making ket, which makes their chief obstacle other substantive political contributions? The would-be artists rather than capitalism as a collection’s title essay proposes that art- system, regardless of whatever critical con- ists’ class position opposes their interests to tent might inhere in their work. When artists those of typical protesters, even when both patronize the working class with declarations are concerned with economic survival. Be- of solidarity, their vows are motivated less by cause artists, unlike wage laborers, have a di- a desire for social change than by the impera- rect stake in what they produce and face no tive that they enhance the distinctive value of workplace discipline other than what they their personal brand. impose on themselves, their political atti- In the context of artists’ fundamentally tudes are structurally different from those of personal ambitions, “the trope of anony- the working class, who know they are inter- mous teamwork” can “seem wildly radical,” changeable parts in the machine of capital- Davis observes in “Collective Delusions,” ism and must organize collectively to resist though such working conditions are rou- it. “The predominant character” of the con- tine for nearly everyone else. Mistaking the temporary art scene, on the other hand, “is achievement of collective purpose as the ac- middle class,” Davis contends, referring not complishment of collective aims, artists ar- to a particular income or earning potential riving at the scene of activism promulgate a but rather to artists’ relation to their labor. politics of “carnivalesque street parties” in Artists work for themselves, own what they which participation is sufficient as a goal. But make, and must concern themselves with carnivals are the tolerated states of excep- how to sell it. Though art has often made a tion that support the ordinary operation of mission of shocking middlebrow taste and power. As Davis puts it, artists’ eagerness for artists have often congregated in urban Bo- “temporary autonomous zones” is a “perfect hemian enclaves in working-class neighbor- recipe for displacing the goal of struggle from hoods, they are less vanguard proletarians enduring material change that could benefit than petit bourgeois. large numbers of people to a spectacle that is This makes artists inescapably individual- purely for the amusement of those who take istic, concerned chiefly about differentiating part.” In other words, artists turn protest into their product. As Davis notes, “an overem- an aestheticized experiential good, some- phasis on the creation of individual, signa- thing consumed by individuals who can then

68 ROB HORNING disaggregate from the collective with a dis- purchased by capital. Limiting authentic tinctive, treasurable memory. creativity to proven professional artists According to Davis, the artists’ class in- makes creativity both aspirational (it mod- terest “involves defining creativity as pro- els how nonartists should structure their fessional self-expression, which therefore leisure) and vicariously accessible (non- restricts it to creative experts”—the artists. artists can absorb creativity through awed Contemporary visual art, then, is a “a spe- exposure to properly certified art objects). cific creative discipline that arrogates to it- It is thus that artists “represent creativity self the status of representing ‘creativity’ tailored to capitalist specifications.” Artists in general.” Rather than being a common become the designated exemplars of the property developed by the “general intel- form liberty can take under an economic lect” of workers in collaboration and social system that prizes innovation and glorifies interaction, creativity becomes the intellec- ideologically the dignity of the small propri- tual property of certified artists alone, who, etor. Though Davis recognizes this, he also for their livelihood, administer it for the rest tries to give it a dialectical spin, arguing that of society. That is, “real” creativity becomes the artists’ model of freedom demonstrates the preserve of a specially trained elite rath- what autonomy looks like and why it might er than the evolutionary inheritance of the be worth struggling for. entire human species. But because artists are celebrated by capi- Whether or not it correlates to distinc- tal for their seeming independence from it, tions in talent, this distinction between the they are liable to become confused about the fake creativity of ordinary people working social role they play. They think being above in common and the certified creativity of wage labor gives them automatic solidarity appointed artists work- with those who want to ing alone or atop a hier- abolish it. They think archy allows those art- they are fellow travelers ists to make “artworks” when really they are run- with a value on the Limiting authentic ning dogs. market. The point is to Artists make the sat- give only artists a true creativity to proven isfying feeling of being property stake in their professional artists an artist as much as they creative activity—only­ makes creativity make discrete artworks. their creative work has both aspirational and Typical art-world con- inherent value. Every- vicariously accessible sumers, however, are one else’s creative effort not interested in the is just plain old “labor,” freedom art might sig- which is worthless ­until nify. They want some-

69 CREATIVE TYRANNY thing to invest in and something that sets Helping them in their studied ignorance is them apart. The trade in art objects is mainly the reified notion of the “art world,” which about updating the prestige scoreboard (and Davis contends is a convenient obfuscation property values) in the rarefied “art world” that allows participants and aspirants to dis- of multimillionaire collectors, gallery own- avow their collusion with contemporary cap- ers, museum trustees, and artists becoming italism’s structural inequalities of status and brands. The structure of the entire art milieu access. “The notion of an ‘art world’ implies is meant to forestall the broader apprecia- a sphere that is separate or set aside from the tion of art and protect its capability to sig- issues of the non–art world (and so separates nify status. It is meant to allow rich people it from class issues outside that sphere).” Art- to recognize the fruits of their wealth in their ists have pure intentions, yet their collective exclusive access to the world’s finest things. activities would seem to destroy all possible The glory of the view lies primarily in its be- optimism about whether creative expression ing private-access. Ordinary people’s appre- can really be everyone’s lifework. “Visual art ciation of art attaches to works like so many still holds the allure of being basically a mid- barnacles, ruining their meaning for collec- dle-class field, where personal agency and tors. As with any luxury brand, the wrong professional ambition overlap,” Davis insists, sort of audience for an artist can sully their but he points out sadly in his introduction market value completely. that “year after year” the contemporary art This is why so much of the discourse that world “chews up and spits out idealistic peo- surrounds contemporary art is so nauseating. ple, leaving them disgusted and heartsick.” It deliberately aims to destroy the confidence The same could be said of the world of of nonelite audiences in their own judgment; literary journals, creative writing, and the it wants to make their potential pleasure in “intellectual milieu” in general; each serves art depend ona recognition of their exclusion as a catch basin for those eager to transcend from the realm of art-making. We get the joy the ordinary economic relations that largely of knowing there’s some consumption ex- determine the lives of ordinary people. Often perience beyond us that can remain forever fueled by inherited privilege and a nurtured aspirational, which gives us cause to cherish sense of entitlement, the up-and-coming whatever brief peeks we get over the wall. cadres of the “creative class” seek ways to Market ratification affirms an artist’s am- transform their yearning to be extraordinary bition, which in turn feeds the market and into a career, and if that fails, into a politics the constitutive power of its major players. based mainly on the demand for lucrative Art can’t break the grip of the market without self-expression. All the while they imagine also breaking artists’ determination to exist as themselves exemplars of unsullied, disinter- a class apart. It is no surprise, then, that artists ested aesthetic aspiration. are largely disinclined to think about class. Given that artists’ status hinges on mys-

70 ROB HORNING tified creativity, they tend to overrate its the aloof pleasures of self-expression, flout- transcendental significance. When “commit- ing convention and embracing individu- ted art practice” acts as a “substitute for the alistic selfishness over consideration and simple act of being politically involved, as an community-building. Graffiti art is Davis’s organizer and activist,” the focus shifts from paradigmatic example, “one of the essential economic injustice to liberating personal artistic products of the neoliberal period.” expression, as though capitalist society has No matter how subversive the content some interest in suppressing it. Even Davis of such art becomes, it never ceases to sup- himself falls into this line of thinking: “Inso- port capitalist hegemony. Artists provide far as contemporary society thwarts or dis- concrete evidence that capitalism nurtures torts self-expression,” he claims, “the urge to autonomous “creativity” and tolerates even follow one’s own creative path can itself be a the most intemperate of its countercultural political impulse.” excesses, while it actually siphons the cre- But consumer capitalism is eager to har- ative energies of nonartists into valorizing ness the creative impulses of everyone. It vir- consumer goods, putting them to innovative tually compels self-expression by allowing use in expressing identity. even the most mundane acts of consumption But there is nothing inherently uncre- to become signifying lifestyle choices. (Is ative about consumerism: Shopping on Etsy your kale organic? etc.) And the elaboration is arguably just as creative and pleasurable as of communications technology has made making crafts for Etsy, tapping the same im- our expression itself a lucrative product that pulses to recognize and prize distinctiveness. we make for free and pay to consume the For those to whom the creative-class spectacle of its distribution. Telecoms and habitus is entirely alien, consumer capitalism social-media companies would like nothing opens up otherwise inaccessible opportuni- more than for us to ex- ties for self-expression, press ourselves as much making participation as possible. If anything, in it genuinely expres- the problem is that capi- Shopping on Etsy sive and satisfying. As talism makes self-ex- consumers use goods to pression seem more im- is arguably convey personal iden- portant than other more just as creative tity, they simultane- cooperative forms of so- and pleasurable ously enrich the signi- cial engagement, a con- as making fying potential of mate- dition that Davis seems crafts for Etsy rial culture for everyone, to want to condemn. He strengthening consum- points out how visual erism’s appeal as social artists often epitomize communication and

71 CREATIVE TYRANNY quasi-artistic expression. Social media inten- ­institutions have always counted on and used sify this, providing a low-barrier platform for as an alibi. people to disseminate their consumer behav- Far from working arm-in-arm with work- ior and track the response it gets, while ab- ers to liberate them from the forces the re- sorbing the influence of their peers. But the strict their expression, artists are more likely artist’s interest rests in ideologically subordi- to work to protect that aura and intensify the nating such pleasures to the glories of profes- qualms ordinary people might have about sional art, thereby protecting the art world’s thinking of their activities as art. Creativ- monopoly on prestige. ity must be held apart from consumerism, Davis waffles on this a bit, in part because protected in the hands of a particular elite these essays were written over a span of several with the appropriate training to keep expres- years but also because he wants contradictory sion “authentically meaningful” rather than things. He seeks to protect the possibility of commercial. At the same time, authentic art an idealized social function for art in the face production must be left in the hands of the of capitalist realities that deny it. He sees art- professionals, who have been endowed with ists’ class position as causing them ideological unique talent and have made a series of spe- problems but thinks the art they make might cial sacrifices to develop their artistic gift. still be immune. Even as he convincingly ar- Ordinary people are endowed only with the gues that there are “different class-based no- ability to consume, and while they may think tions of creative labor” and that “one must that’s creative, they’re kidding themselves. judge art in terms of the contradictory values Part of the problem with artists as cul- given to it by competing class interests,” he is tural role models is that they authorize a gen- ready nonetheless to tout a universal ideal of eral devaluing of labor by making it seem as “creative expression” and assert that art has though “creativity” is its own reward. In “Art some objective value that could be deduced and Class,” Davis notes that “the term ‘artist’ in the abstract, independent of the class strug- has connotations of freedom and personal gle that everywhere else determines the rela- satisfaction that can be used to obscure real tive value of human effort. relationships of exploitation when it is over- But it’s impossible to say artworks are generalized to apply to any type of labor that “great” without also implying that those who is deemed remotely creative.” This logic is can see that objective greatness are in a supe- used to justify unpaid internships and mea- rior aesthetic position to those preoccupied sly salaries in the so-called glamour indus- with consumer junk. In wanting to preserve tries. But that justification hinges on the idea the traditional transcendental quality of art, that culturally recognized opportunities to Davis is arguing for the very same rarefied be creative are scarce. It’s not that too many aura that critics and collectors and museums people are labeled artists then expected to and art schools and all the other art-world work for less, as Davis suggests, but that not

72 ROB HORNING enough people recognize the artistry in what be made a political target, as though social they are already doing and live with a sense media hasn’t proved that a vast and growing of social inferiority and self-doubt. If they are economy of approval can’t be technological- to protect their own cultural capital, profes- ly called into being. “Universal consumerism sional artists (and curators and critics) must has indeed augmented the creative instru- endorse the standards that pronounce some ments at the disposal of the average person,” people as uncreative. Davis concedes in “Beneath Street Art, the “Creative expression needs to be rede- Beach,” “but this potential is not matched fined,” Davis declares in the title essay. “It by opportunities within the sphere of official should not be thought of as a privilege but culture for people to realize themselves as a basic human need … it should be treated professional creative individuals.” as a right to which everyone is entitled.” But Who cares about the sanctity of the “of- creative expression is neither a privilege or a ficial culture,” which has a class-based inter- need but an inherent characteristic of human est in restricting that endorsement to a select endeavor. It is not something decreed by fiat. few? The opportunities it provides and the Yet Davis seems to think that while “we self-realization that might stem from them are all creative people,” some people’s cre- are already poisoned from a political point ativity is more “interesting” than others, and of view. Davis won’t surrender the idea that this warrants the elaboration of culture-wide “official approval matters” and that there is social practices for separating the divinely an objective basis for determining “legiti- inspired from the dullards. He implicitly mate self-expression.” Such official approval dismisses the view that everyone’s activity may matter to professional artists, because can be legitimately “artistic” as so much au- it is the source of their livelihood, and Davis tonomist wishful think- seems eager to defend ing, scorning “Hardt the right of a select few and his co-thinkers” for to make a living through claiming that “the en- art. To the rest of us, it tire proletariat has been Who cares about the is the stifling source of aestheticized.” In disput- delegitimization. It is a ing artist Joseph Beuys’s sanctity of the “official reminder of the concrete notion that “everyone is culture,” which is reality of that solipsistic, an artist,” Davis refers interested in restricting insidery “art world” that fatalistically to the scar- endorsement to a Davis is otherwise so city of social approval, eager to see dismantled. as though the uneven select few? Shouldn’t those exclud- distribution of social ed from the official art recognition couldn’t world create their own

73 CREATIVE TYRANNY opportunities, according to their own com- got corrupted? Whose ideal of purity would munal standards, pitting their values against have been upheld? those of the official culture, and the social -or Similarly, in a postscript to his essay der that supports it, if necessary? Shouldn’t “White Walls, Glass Ceilings,” Davis urges they destroy art to save it? we fight for “a world where art’s value es- In “Crisis and Criticism” Davis admits capes the deformities imposed upon it by a personal motive for his own faith in art’s an unequal society.” Davis wants there to be transcendence: “I have to believe that some generalized social practices that can certify theory about art’s purpose is important— art’s value without somehow stratifying a so- without a seriously argued perspective on ciety in which art has economic value. Yet if what makes visual art distinctive, all you artistic ability is unequally distributed by na- have left is the art world as a crappy arm of ture, that fact alone will generate an unequal pop culture or a place for high-end gam- society as long as art is singled out for spe- bling.” Those descriptions don’t seem wrong cial cultural significance. Art is so complicit (nor do they seem mutually exclusive), and in structuring cultural hierarchies, it makes Davis’s determination to not to accept them more sense to argue that art’s value never simply to preserve critics’ and artists’ dignity precedes the existence of those deformities seems a thin veneer. and to agitate for a world where art is granted Art’s higher purpose becomes an origin no alienable “value” at all. myth that holds out the promise that eventu- In the collection’s last paragraph, Davis ally the art world that destroys so many ideal- comes around to something like this posi- ists will ultimately be redeemed. In “The Ag- tion, that from the perspective of a future ony of the Interloper,” an essay about “outsid- communist society, the idea that “great art er art,” Davis argues that the “institutions of was something rare and precious, a triumph art, like all institutions in an unequal society, that had to be scratched out against all odds, are warped by their context.” But an ongoing a privilege that needed to be defended with unequal context is what brought these in- boundless righteousness and walled off in its stitutions into being. Their express purpose own specific professional sphere will likely is to rule on who belongs and who doesn’t seem strange.” There is no reason to regard based on social position. it as less than strange now. There never have been any We can start by rejecting unwarped art institutions; Shouldn’t they the need to identify “great” they are warped by design. art and the class victors Does Davis really believe destroy art it nominates. When art is that art institutions once to save it? finally worthless, it will be served some pure notion free for everyone to make of art and then somehow and enjoy. n

74 Leaving on a Jet Plane

By JESSICA LOUDIS

IN AN ERA when going through airport security demands a level of intimacy that Why was skyjacking would ordinarily require several dinner so common in the dates, it’s mildly shocking to realize that security measures were once so lax that for 1960s and ’70s? a brief period of time, the American skies served as a playground for an aerial ver- sion of Grand Theft Auto. As Wired con- tributing editor Brendan Koerner details in The Skies Belong to Us, over an 11-year period from 1961 to 1972, 159 commer- cial airlines were hijacked across the U.S., sometimes as frequently as twice a week. (On especially exciting days, two separate hijackings might even happen simultane- ously.) The identities of the skyjackers, as the New York Daily Mirror dubbed them, were diverse: from former mental patients to wealthy white heiresses to radical Marx- ists. They were seen as something between outlaws and heroes, latter-day pirates pro- pelled by the loss of late-sixties idealism and aided by the airline industry’s reti- cence to impose strict—or any—security measures. (Airlines feared it would cost them customers; the government more or less acquiesced.) The Skies Belong to Us Brendan Koerner takes readers through this heady age via The Skies Belong to Us two of its more successful protagonists, Crown, 336 pages but before getting to them, allow me a quick survey of the period’s highlights.

75 LEAVING ON A JET PLANE

Excepting a bizarre incident in 1954 in fering free one-way flights to Cuba to any- which a “giant teenager” unsuccessfully at- body who wanted them—a measure the tempted to hijack an American Airlines flight, Cuban government rejected. the threat of skyjacking was so far off the gov- In 1969, the Federal Aviation Adminis- ernment’s radar in the late fifties that it forgot tration convened a special anti-hijacking task to make hijacking a crime when it passed the force to come up with a solution to the prob- Federal Aviation Law in 1958. The first wave lem. The most popular suggestion (which of hijackings began in the spring of 1961, was never acted upon) was to build a mock when a deranged Miami electrician diverted version of Havana’s Jose Marti Airport in a flight from Key West to Cuba in order to South Florida to trick hijackers into thinking warn Castro about a fictitious assassination that they had reached Cuba. attempt. The man was arrested upon arrival, By 1971, skyjackings had become so fre- the passengers were treated to lunch in Ha- quent that Lloyd’s of London started offer- vana, and the flight was delayed by three ing hijacking insurance to travelers in the hours before landing safely in Key West. U.S., guaranteeing “$500 per day of captivity, Once Kennedy finally made skyjack- plus $2,500 in medical coverage, and $5,000 ing a capital offense, in the fall of 1961, the in the event of death or dismemberment” in designation led to a lull in hijackings that exchange for a $75 premium per flight. would last until 1965, when a 14-year-old The era of skyjacking reached its apogee boy commandeered a plane in Hawaii. Af- and conclusion in 1972. That year saw 40 ter that, Cuba proved to be by far the most separate hijackings and a coup-de-grace in popular destination for hijackers: By 1968, which three men hijacked a plane over cen- regardless of their destination, all airplanes tral Alabama and threatened to fly it into a were outfitted with nuclear power station. charts of the Carib- After realizing that air- bean sea in the event planes could potentially of a rerouting to Ha- be used as “weapons vana. For several years, The era of skyjacking of mass destruction” hijacked planes were a the government finally source of extra income reached its apotheosis mandated the use of for the Castro regime, in 1972, with 40 metal detectors and which charged airlines separate hijackings armed guards at air- an average of $7,500 to and a threat on a ports nationwide. (All retrieve their aircraft. nuclear power stations this took place several To dissuade would-be years before Venezuelan hijackers, the State De- celebre-terrorist Carlos partment proposed of- the Jackal kidnapped 42

76 JESSICA LOUDIS members of OPEC and negotiated a plane to spent the duration of the trip talking to imagi- fly them to Algiers.) nary Weathermen over the intercom.) While Kerkow sat in the back and kept quiet about her connection to Holder, he demanded the CLEARLY KOERNER HAS plenty of mate- delivery of half a million dollars and Angela rial to work with, but he decides to focus on Davis, the black radical who was then await- Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow, two unlike- ing trial for murder in San Jose. ly criminals who executed one of the most As was the norm with skyjackings, noth- dramatic skyjackings in U.S. history. We meet ing went according to plan. (An important the pair in San Diego in 1972, just months be- lesson for prospective hijackers: Don’t take fore the government decision to take air safe- over a plane that can’t carry enough fuel to ty seriously. Holder is an unemployed huck- get you to your preferred destination.) After ster, a black PTSD-suffering Vietnam vet who retrieving their ransom and discharging pas- expresses his resentment of the military by se- sengers at JFK, Holder opted to fly to Algiers ducing the wives of men in uniform. Kerkow instead of Vietnam, and rather than “liber- is 20, white, an erotic masseuse and a former ate” Angela Davis (who wanted no part in his Black Panther groupie with an abundance of scheme) he demanded that Black Panther free time. They hit it off right away, bound leader Eldridge Cleaver meet him on the tar- by a mutual appreciation for sex and drugs, mac in Algeria. Algiers was not yet an inter- and, oddly enough, a childhood encounter nationally known refuge for hijackers, but it in Oregon decades earlier. Before long they was about to become one.1 start dating, and not long after that, inspired When the Western Airlines Flight landed by growing anger over the Vietnam War and in Algiers, Holder and Kerkow were greeted the Charleton Heston flopSkyjacked , Holder not by the Black Panthers but by the head decides to hijack a plane. The plan is to end up of the Algerian secret police, who confis- in Australia, with a stopover in Hanoi to make cated the money (which was later returned a show of support for the Vietcong. to Western Airlines) and handed over the And this is how it went down: On June 2, couple to government operatives, including a 1972, Holder and Kerkow boarded a West- ern Airlines flight from San Diego to Seattle. 1. If you’re wondering why the Black Panthers were Soon after takeoff, Holder, in full military in Algeria, here’s some context: Cleaver, after fleeing the U.S. in the late sixties, set up shop in Algeria at dress, handed a stewardess a note informing the behest of president Houari Boumediene, who her that there was a bomb on the plane. He provided the organization with a $500 monthly sti- pend and a gated villa. Things went well for a while, then entered the cockpit and told the crew but by the seventies, the International Section of that the Students for a Democratic Society the Black Panther Party (as the Algiers outpost was known) was cash-strapped and more than willing had taken his family hostage and were forc- to take in a skyjacker with incoherent politics and ing him to commandeer the flight. (Holder $500,000 in cash.

77 Imp Kerr

man nicknamed No Nuts. After several weeks time smoking hash on the beach. of interrogation, Holder and Kerkow were The couple’s journey over the next several released into the custody of the Panthers. years more or less continued in this surreal Relations quickly soured: The Panthers sus- vein: When Cleaver fled the country after pected the couple of being FBI informants, sending a patronizing letter to Boumediene, and the couple suspected the Panthers of he appointed Holder his successor. When, being opportunists. (Cleaver’s first words to in turn, Holder and Kerkow fled to Paris and Holder were “So, where’s the bread?”) But were forced to fight extradition proceed- this turn of events wasn’t a total disappoint- ings, they were supported by the French ment: Holder and Kerkow did spend a lot of ­intellectual establishment and by Jean-Paul

78 JESSICA LOUDIS

Sartre, instantly becoming national celeb- months before the end of his life. rities. During these years, Holder’s mental The book, in short, is a trip. But that’s health splintered into bouts of paranoia and about the extent of it. For all its resemblance anxiety. He spent time in a Marxist psychiat- to a cautionary tale about the curdling of six- ric institute outside Paris and suffered panic ties idealism, a semi-comical account of the attacks that left him hospitalized. (Even so, in failure of government oversight, or even a 1984 while destitute and nearly homeless, he botched script for a late Antonioni movie, met and married “a six-time divorcee a dozen The Skies Belong to Us ends up being little years his senior” who was paralyzed on one more than a well-researched case study into side of her body.) Kerkow, in contrast, flit- a particularly bizarre moment in Ameri- ted among the Parisian creative elite, became can history. Koerner has no political axe to fluent in French, and subsidized her lifestyle grind: The hijackings, rather than being seen through a series of wealthy boyfriends before as symptomatic of larger political or socio- vanishing forever one night in 1978. cultural problems, are treated as strange viral Save for a final, embarrassing specula- phenomena, opportunistic infections attack- tion about Kerkow’s current status and ing a diseased airline system. Koerner might whereabouts—“I picture her as a digni- consider hijacking to be an avenue of per- fied French woman in her early sixties, her sonal expression for his eccentric and unfail- once-lustrous hair now short and streaked ingly earnest subjects, but the deeper causes with gray … she and her retired husband of their discontent go largely unexamined. occupy a well-appointed house in a sleepy Perhaps because of the extensive inter- hamlet a few hours’ drive from Paris, views that went into researching the book, where they also own a pied-à-terre”—her Koerner has the disconcerting habit of ven- story ends here. Holder, on the other hand, triloquizing his characters’ thoughts. Upon after years of petitioning the government, storming the cockpit, Holder “took a mo- finally won the right to return to the U.S. ment to savor the feeling of accomplish- Heavily dosed on psychotropic drugs, he ment; for the first time in ages, he felt wholly flew into JFK on a July day in 1986 and was in tune with the universe’s intentions for his promptly jailed, serving three years in de- life.” Kerkow is “confident she [can] dupe any tention before being transferred to a half- FBI agent by flashing her coquettish smile.” way house in San Diego. The next several Much better is when Koerner allows his years were spent in and out of psychiatric characters to speak for themselves. institutes and courtrooms, in a blur of tem- Questioned after his crime, one skyjacker porary addresses that made it all the more offers a rationale that seems to characterize difficult for Koerner to find him, which the the fuck-it-all ethos of the era: “It was better reporter ultimately did, locating Holder than eighteen years of therapy, or whatever. It in a run-down San Diego apartment only just seemed like the answer.” n

79 80 A brief story of a woman in two frames, across nations and ocean, who falls from a tower and lands at a crossroads, from the sunset’s fire to the intestinal unfurling of ghost sparks

by EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS

Magic lantern slides: Joseph Boggs Beale, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai

81 82 EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS

83 TODAY I READ an interview with the found- How did he squeeze so much happiness into er of the New Inquiry, and during the conver- one life and then still squeeze in some more? sation, my name came up. In a journalistic, if Just about now you’re probably thinking not anthropological, attempt to describe me, that I’m choosing to interpret things the way I was said to have “a bit of a belly.” I took this I want to, seeing what I want to see. Well, right description as meaning I had a bit too much you are, but more important, right you will of a belly rather than being in possession be, if you can learn to personalize your own of only a small part of one. I would venture life story as you live it. I have a vivid dream to guess that in certain societies, my bread­ life that, mixed with my muddied sense of re- basket might seem somewhat overstuffed, ality, left me no choice but to be in a constant but that’s not the world I live in. When most state of do-over. And let me tell you, it works people see any late-in-life pictures of Orson if you work it. Welles, they are shocked by his girth, won- Universal truth is so elusive. Like the uni- dering how this great genius could waste his corn, it might not even exist, so as the end life just getting large and larger. When I come of time approaches, it seems pointless and across any images of the portly maestro, I ask, wasteful to keep pursuing it.

84 Now when fabricating this new outlook good news, we don’t want to lose our ability on life, you still need some kind of fair wit- to smell a rat. For example, you might hear ness to guide you in the construction of the new pope saying that being gay is not a your meta-reality. Otherwise you could find sin and it’s not for him to judge, but over- yourself blinded by the rose-colored glasses look him saying that acting gay is indeed you’ve only just put on. You need to achieve very much a sin. It’s a veritable “some of my some kind of balance, and it’s not easy. You best friends are…” moment and not to be ig- might worry that you’re just rebranding nored. You don’t want to get caught thinking yourself, but it’s more like building a better someone is giving a thumb’s-up when they brand of you. It’s just getting to know your- are saying only that they won’t point a finger. self as well your search engine does. There are many responsibilities in being This isn’t some kind of virtual second life, the architect of your own existence, so tread rather a chance to re-evaluate the way you carefully. But make sure you’re wearing your perceive your actual life. Once you have the favorite shoes. n proper perception in place, you’ve got yourself a new reality. The beau- ty part is if it breaks down, you can tweak it or acquire an entirely new slant. It’s your end of times—you drive it. Still, there are dangers in be- ing your own creator. If you need to delude yourself a bit, that’s fine, but I recommend small doses. You want to avoid becoming one of those heavy-handed self-creators who have no limits to their own grandeur. What do you think al- lows Jay Z to presume that just his presence is charity and that his very corporeal existence is the highest form of benevolence he can bestow on his fellow humans? That being said, I must say I do appreciate his going green and removing the hy- phen from his name. While we all want to be hearing

85 Sandro Botticelli,The Birth of Venus, 1486

Vincent van Gogh, Old Man in Sorrow Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Physalis, 1912 (On the Threshold of Eternity), 1890

Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656 Jean-Michel Basquiat, Eroica I, 1988

86 Francis Bacon, Second Version of Triptych 1944, 1988

Edvard Munch, Madonna, 1894-1895 Andy Warhol, Liz, 1964

Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam, c. 1511–1512 Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Mona Lisa (La Joconde), c. 1503–1506

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