Terre Thaemlitz and the Languages of Silence
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The Contemporary Journal are cut, as are the philosopher’s various interactions with participants at the seminar. All the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ are trimmed away. ‘Hush Now’: Terre Laughter is evacuated; silences vanish. Thaemlitz and the The cover of the posthumous Fearless Speech book shows Foucault holding up a megaphone Languages of at a protest on the streets of Paris in 1969, and heroic images of the philosopher wielding a Silence bullhorn tend to reappear whenever his work on parrhesia is evoked – but Foucault himself drew Amelia Groom no clear or final equation between amplification and empowerment.[1] His History of Sexuality begins with an analysis of what he calls ‘the incitement to discourse’ in European modernity, where sex is subjected to new discursive regimes of demographic observation, criminal classification, judicial intervention, clinical scrutiny, pedagogical regulation, theoretical elaboration, and so on. October 1983, the UC Berlekey campus in The Victorians may have ushered in Northern California. Michel Foucault is about unprecedented prudishness and unspeakability, an hour in to the introductory session for his but within what is usually characterized as a seminar on parrhesia, a word usually translated rule of silence, Foucault identifies an age of from the Greek as ‘speaking truth to power’ or ‘immense verbosity’ where sex is forced into a [2] ‘fearless speech’. He is responding to a question discursive existence. about parrhesiastic friendship, when suddenly Through such a framework, ‘speaking up’ the bells of the university’s clock tower start to cannot be characterized simply or only as a toll. There are just a few dongs at first, and he necessary counter to imposed silence. As tries to keep going – but as the bells get louder Foucault puts it, silence is ‘less the absolute there’s a momentary breakdown in the limit of discourse, the other side from which it philosopher’s speech, and a momentary is separated by a strict boundary, than an breakout of laughter in the room. element that functions alongside the things The sonic interruption of the bells, and the said, with them and in relation to them within [3] somatic eruption of the laughter, are both over-all strategies.’ There are many ways of absent in the transcripts of the seminar saying and many ways of not saying – and there recordings that were published by Semiotext(e) are many ways in which both silence and as a book called Fearless Speech (2001). discourse can be enforced from above or Foucault’s speech in the recordings is erudite deployed from below. Foucault again: but often gently hesitant, with occasional ‘Discourse transmits and produces power; it uncertainty about English words and reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes pronunciations, and several moments of it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to laughter. As tends to happen, when the voice is thwart it. In like manner, silence and secrecy pinned to the page it becomes more stable, are a shelter for power, anchoring its more authoritative, more isolated. Repetitions prohibitions; but they also loosen its holds and The Contemporary Journal ‘Hush Now’: Terre Thaemlitz and the Languages of [1/7] Sonic Continuum Silence - Amelia Groom provide for relatively obscure areas of word silence in Theamlitz’s reappropriation of tolerance.’[4] the iconic graphic was obviously not about returning to the historical condition of silence In what follows, I attempt to tune in to some of that the Silence=Death slogan had addressed. the protective and confrontational silences that Silence around HIV/AIDS remains deadly, and have been deployed in the work of Terre since it was launched in 1993, Thaemlitz’s Thaemlitz, a Kawasaki-based artist, writer and website has featured an ‘HIV/AIDS 101’ guide self-described ‘nuisance’ who has released providing information on terminology, music and audio projects under various aliases, transmission, testing and prevention.[6] In her including G.R.R.L., K-S.H.E, Miss Take, Social Love for Sale essay of 1998, and in the album of Material, Terre’s Neu Wuss Fusion, and, most the same name which was released on CD the famously, DJ Sprinkles. Writing in defence of following year, however, Thaemlitz was what she calls ‘the languages of silence’ within concerned with another kind of silence – an queer critical practices, Thaemlitz has argued emergent historical process that she called that when acquisition and amplification are ‘assimilation’s silencing of Queer difference’.[7] unquestioned as the sole strategies by which oppression is identified and fought, quietness Following the height of AIDS activism in the becomes culturally frowned upon – and that, as US, there was greater representation of queers a result, ‘we have culturally lost skills for and queer life in mainstream media and popular understanding the value of secrets, their culture. At the same time, an assimilationist protective power and their ability to connect silencing of difference and dissidence meant people in deep ways through the cultivation of that a lot of the earlier political struggles were personally affecting social responsibilities’.[5] subsumed under the intensifying regimes of respectability, marketability, and gay and The CD design for Thaemlitz’s 1999 album lesbian conservatism.[8] The increased attention Love for Sale: Taking Stock in Our Pride features and visibility might seem to counter the a pink triangle on a black background, with the historical violence of anti-queer silencing, but word SILENCE written in white capital letters Thaemlitz’s concern was with what became underneath, clearly referencing the hushed along the way. Writing in 2006, she Silence=Death Project’s posters which were claimed that direct action AIDS activism in the first wheatpasted around New York City in US had ‘run its course’ by the mid ‘90s: 1987, and which went on to become emblematic of the HIV/AIDS activism movement. In Thaemlitz’s reworking of the graphic, though, ‘Those who declared “Silence=Death” the second part of the equation is removed so had for the most part fallen silent under that the word silence stands on its own. a new hush of media visibility, bureaucratic cooperation, and In its original context, ‘Silence=Death’ was a institutionalization (including Community rallying call that demanded vocality in the Based Organizations typically reliant midst of the literally lethal silence of the upon large, non-community funding Reagan administration – along with all the bases – in turn absorbing “expansionist” homophobia, racism, poverty, religious business models of outreach that bigotry, big pharma greed, familial neglect, remained unreconciled with notions of societal indifference, journalistic negligence, localization and the microsocial) (…) and governmental inaction that constituted the Weakened by exhaustion, desiring AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The isolation of the mass-cultural understanding of and The Contemporary Journal ‘Hush Now’: Terre Thaemlitz and the Languages of [2/7] Sonic Continuum Silence - Amelia Groom sympathy for our various issues, and essay and album. The first track on the album, seduced by the reflection of our own Taking Stock in Our Pride, is an audio collage strategies, an unfounded “public trust” piecing together samples from a local television was born. We forgot the alternative broadcast covering the San Francisco Pride histories and struggles from which AIDS Parade. A relentlessly cheery business and activism sprang, peacefully hushed by media friendly affirmation of ‘legitimacy and the hypnotic repetition of our reified Pop credibility’ suffocates the acoustic field, as image.’[9] fragmentary voices enthuse over corporate sponsorship, merchandise, product placement, and money: ‘If you want a really fabulous Thaemlitz – who identifies as non-essentialist leather outfit, what’s it gonna set you back?’, ‘I transgender and uses both she and he pronouns like the idea of The Lavender Chamber of – grew up in the American Midwest. She moved Commerce!’, ‘six thousand dollars’, ‘fifty to New York in 1986, when she had just turned thousand dollars’, ‘a hundred and fifty 18, to study at the Cooper Union School of Art. thousand dollars’, ‘one point six million a He has recalled that going to art school left her year’, ‘tons of money, they’re great people!’. disillusioned with ‘the exclusionary politics of the visual arts industry’, leading her to focus Someone in one of the sound bites who wants to instead on cultural theory and electronic music acknowledge ‘the Stonewall drag queens and (although her work has increasingly been transgender people who started the whole shown in exhibition contexts in recent years, movement in New York in 1969’ is promptly cut [10] including at Documenta 14 in 2017). short by the presenters.[11] By the end of the two minute and fourty-six second track, it is clear Living in the East Village in the late ‘80s, that within this noisy embrace of the previously Thaemlitz also became involved in safer-sex silenced, there is also active erasure, as well as educational outreach and other forms of completely unchecked continuation of HIV/AIDS activism, including with the direct- transphobia, and general contempt for gender action group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to nonconformity. One nervous exchange between Unleash Power). He started DJ-ing at activist the presenters goes like this: ‘they’re benefits under the name DJ Sprinkles, which cosmetically enhanced’, ‘um, excuse me?’ was in part a tribute to sex work performance ‘apparently they’ve had … things … done to artist Annie Sprinkle, who was doing her live themselves … surgically’, ‘ok, well I think it’s feminist sex shows and safer sex workshops in about time that we can take a break here’. downtown New York at the time. By 1992, Thaemlitz was recording his own tracks, and in Against any sort of sweeping progress narrative 1993 he started the record label Comatonse that would draw a simple equation between the Recordings.