Life/Theater

Lee Walton
Life/Theatre Project: San Francisco

Lee Walton is a long-time resident of the Bay Area who recently relocated to New York. While living here he built a small following for his rigorous, strenuous and exceedingly odd task-oriented public performances. These usually were performed by himself, on the street, and had to do with rigid rules requiring specific behaviors depending on such outside events as the ebb and flow of a baseball game he would follow on radio. Life/Theatre is a much grander event still involving the street but with a cast of some two dozen actors recruited on Craig’s List. The audience was invited to walk down both sides of Mission Street between Cesar Chavez and 24th Street between 3pm and 4pm to observe people and see if they could identify the actors.

In general, for the typical theatrical performance, the audience and performers know which of the two categories they fall into. In some cases, viewers may become participants, but there is no mystery about who is a performer or a viewer at any given moment. In Life/Theater, the viewers did not know who were performers, performers didn’t know who were the other performers, or who the viewers were (viewers were people who were aware there were performers present and were looking for them), and other people on the street who were not performers or viewers weren’t aware of the specific presence of either category of people. Viewers couldn’t even tell other viewers from civilians.

Because of the absence of clear indicators as to who was an actor and who was a viewer, this standard theatrical division became the focus of the performance. As in a typical performance, actors were assigned specific roles and tasks, and given a time and location in which they were to perform them. Since the viewers did not know who to watch perform, their task became more active than that of the typical audience member: they were forced to decide who was acting and who was not. Psychologically the street became the stage—which it can be argued it always is, as people can always be viewed carrying out a variety of roles and tasks in public---except not all the observed were innocent. The performers became guilty of trying to fool the viewers, and even the innocent, into believing that they were not actors, but in fact belonged on the stage as an innocent. The viewers and the performers cast a secret and invisible net over the quotidian, playing a game of hiding in plain sight. Of course, all actors seek to convince viewers that they are not acting, but in this situation the viewer is not looking to be convinced of veracity but is trying to deduce its opposite, a subtle self-consciousness.

Therefore, the viewer was forced to develop criteria for deciding who was an actor and who was innocent. Since the street was crowded with people, most just walking along, the challenge became deciding who belongs and who is a stealthy intruder. Is it physical characteristics or is it unusual or odd quirks of behavior? What variety of people would be expected to be here on this stretch of Mission Street and what would they be expected to be doing? What are the viewers’ own biases about how assessing people, given any specific neighborhood and its demographics?

I identified a handful of people who later turned out to be some of the 28 actors, but most of the actors, who later assembled at the Southern Exposure space, I did not even remember seeing. The actual actors I identified were:
1. A young blonde woman dressed a little too higher end hip for Mission Street, who was sitting on the sidewalk against a building, her knees pulled up, and her head down on her folded arms.
2. A young man sitting far too long (the entire hour) on a bench listening to a portable radio with headphones.
3. An older man wearing a cowboy hat and boots, who I saw several times in different locations, looking out of place wherever he was.
4. Two men and a woman carrying small cheap worn bookshelves which no one looking like them would ever buy.

People I was sure were actors, who turned out not to be, included: a man who seemed dressed ever-so-slightly too well sitting with what I assumed were homeless people in a small plaza; a young woman with an awful-looking cheap wig topped by a weird hat; and an older, balding man walking quickly down the street in medical greens whom I was certain was an actor as he looked so out of place. I was staring at him for so long that I tripped and fell down right next to him, at which point the man stopped and said, “Are you alright? I’m a doctor. Do you need help?” I still thought he might be an actor, but then wondered if it was unethical to say you were a doctor if you weren’t. A perfect effect of this provocative theatrical game.

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My Love is a 187

Mickalene Thomas "I Cant See You Without Me" 2007

“My love is a 187” is clearly a poetic statement. 187, in police code, translates to homicide / murder; it is also the title of a Samuel L. Jackson movie from the late 90s where Jackson plays a teacher in a Brooklyn high school who gets brutally stabbed in the back by a black male student whom he had failed in science. When I think of those who were both loved and murdered - Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, Marvin Gaye, and Tupac Shakur all come to mind. After much deliberating, I realized I was trying to penetrate a koan. e.g. Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand? Koans generally contain aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible through intuition.

Or is the title in fact a statement designed with the intent to fly directly in the face of black stereotypes?

All of the artists in this exhibition have received the terminal degree of an MFA at prestigious art schools, which may or may not mean that they are on the track of professorship in the world of academia. In any case, after scanning their exhibition history, they all should have the choice.

The work, in varying degrees, mines the timeline of black history and pop culture. The farthest-reaching reference came from Mark Bradford with “Alexandria,” his found and altered footage of Alexandria in north central Egypt, home to the Library of Alexandria. A seemingly unassociated altered billboard piece, “Lucky” made a connection by way of his new excavation technique. He strips and scratches the surface of the Lucky jeans advert until subtle colors and textures emerge. He cuts out the word Lucky with a blade in a random approach leaving some letters intact while sliced. He then treats the surface with white paint in the same way one would dust for fingerprints searching for clues. If anyone has ever visited a Lucky jeans chain store knows the faint smell of coconut oil and the poached rock-n-roll imagery that attempts to seduce with its retro style. Lucky wants you to believe you are rummaging through Jimi Hendrix closet. Bradford snatches back 60s rock heritage through the elegant defacement he performs on the Lucky billboard- himself/artist emerging as the style icon.

Titus Kaphar re-authors the narrative of 18th and 19th century painting through a personal editing process of adding and subtracting. In three small daguerreotypes “White Underneath”1,2,3, he carefully re-paints images of his ancestors over the original white sitters. Kaphar luminously renders verbatim large oil canvases that portray enslaved Blacks in American paintings and then cuts out compass-perfect circles with a surgical hand. Within these circles is the information with which he re-orders the story within the paintings. In “Spouse,” a dandily dressed black man sits with an elegantly dressed woman with a cutout circle for a head and her hand has been edited by a circle as well. From a distance you are left to wonder and make assumptions about the woman. If you look closely, her wrist is still intact and it is white. In “Finding Moses” the same process is applied. The only figures left in the canvas are a slave in the bottom left corner holding a basket , a gentile white woman with eyes cast down on him, and a mysterious midget attending the woman. Her bosom is squashed, uplifted, and squarely on view. Between her corsets, laces, and wigs, I’m not sure who is more uncomfortable him or her. All of the other peoples’ faces have been edited by cutout circles of different sizes. The cutouts are then applied to a wall adjacent to the painting in a seemingly random order. A psychological game emerges; one has to decipher the re-authored narrative much like the koan. What Kaphar is telling you is ambiguous enough so you can still use your imagination while suggesting that what was originally painted may have been as carefully edited as his final presentation.

Mickalene Thomas takes us to the 70s with a set design that looks like it may have been in a Blaxploitation film. Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the U.S. in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made that targeted the urban African American audience. The word itself is a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation". The films starred primarily black actors, and were the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music. Although criticized by civil rights groups for their use of stereotypes, they addressed the great and newfound demand for Afrocentric entertainment, and were immensely popular among black audiences. The blaxploitation genre officially began in 1971 with the release of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song.” For Thomas’ installation “Between Ourselves,” Thomas collected astute 70s props from S.F. thrift shops, which include a gaudy couchette, formica furniture and loud orange and yellow floral wallpaper that has been applied then torn away, reapplied again to be slightly vandalized with a light hand. Soul records and beaded women’s garments are strategically placed about the set mastering the classic disco den vibe. On the fake-wood paneled wall hang two photographs of Thomas’s models Six Foota and Lady Blue in situ. The fashionable towering women are all sexed- up with glass lips, soft fros, smoky eyes and more thigh than not. They do not look at you, their eyes averted and successfully look past beyond the viewers gaze. On a turquoise wall hangs “I Cant See You Without Me,” a 6’x6’ sequined and jeweled enamel painting of a generously shaped, bare- breasted Venus in a bikini brief. Thomas’s signature be-jeweled paintings nod to British artist Chris Offili’s earlier works but escape into a category all her own with her application of refined American art brut and unapologetic sexuality.

Shinique Smith offers the nearest to now moment in the time line being established in the show. Smiths’ installation “Prayer Tree” is contemporary in surface while the content is subliminal, touching on historical events. Smith crafts a morphed penmanship that looks like a cross between graffiti and Arabic characters to tag the walls surrounding dried tree branches she secured to the wall. Bits of fabric, yarn, and souvenirs are tied to the branches suggesting a pilgrimage site or perhaps a lynching. Underneath the branches are sacks of clear vinyl filled with an assortment of local S.F. clothing that are then tied and bound sculpturally. On the floor Smith employs a variation of her hieroglyphics to cut out a design in a used floral patterned carpet that sharply and graphically projects out from the base of the bound sacs like rays of the sun. All of these disparate elements communicate and suggest you have just happened upon the evidence of a modern ritual, part art, part religion. Smiths’ work is optimistic, spiritual and alternative without preaching.

As I write this in a Mission District coffee shop “T.V. On The Radio” blares, the entire album - "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes" for the second time. Incidentally Kip Malone the lead singer, previously worked at the same coffee shop where I worked on Potrero Hill, Farley’s.

New Work: Phil Collins

Phil Collins' suite of recent videos at San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art has enthralled museum-goers. From old married couples and baby-boomer professionals to college-aged hipsters and loud-mouthed teenagers, these captivating pieces provide a reason to congregate. They glue patrons to their seats, garnering patience and attention that is rare in the context of an art institution. At just shy of an hour, this video projection is titled The World Won’t Listen, after a 1987 Smiths album of the same name (it is the second of three works to bear that title). Its genesis lied in a poster advertising the Turkish rendering of the title (Dünya Dinlemiyor) that was wheatpasted throughout Istanbul that sought, “the shy, the dissatisfied, narcissists, and anyone who's ever wished they could be someone else for a night.”(1) From this poster, Collins recruited a myriad of different individuals willing to sing one of the English rock group's clever, melancholy ballads.

Whether it's a lone crooner or performers singing in duet, all are from Turkey and seem to be in their twenties. In each video, they stand in front of a stage-set landscape; forested lakes, mountain ridgelines, and pristine tropics. Clutching microphones, performers throw themselves into character, eyes closed, belting the lyrics, and grooving passionately to the music they adore. Wearing a shirt that reads 'Kafka', one performer daintily dances to The Smiths' instrumental track Oscillate Wildly. Another, gilded in gold eye-shadow sings an über-melodramatic version of Rubber Ring. As her face fills the screen, she has forgotten the audiences she is performing for and loses herself in the song’s lyrics: ”The passing of time, and all of its crimes, is making me sad again, the passing of time, and all of its sickening crimes, is making me sad again.” The effect of these projections is dramatic in its simplicity. Collins orchestrates multiple meanings in such an elegant way that even the most modest or uninformed viewer will enter into the project of untangling their layers of meaning.

Of all the elements presented, the juxtaposition between the act of singing karaoke and The Smiths is most provocative, as those with even the slightest interest in the band know that their songs are never found on karaoke machines. However, Collins is not alone in his critical inquiry into The Smiths, as critical studies pertaining to the group are not hard to find. A spattering of texts studying their band's career have been published over the past two decades.

In Julian Stringer's The Smiths: Repressed (but Remarkably Dressed), The band’s lyrics and public image is read through England's changing political landscape during Thatcher's administration, as Stringer writes, “The career of the Smiths… can be seen as the only sustained response that white, English pop/rock music was able to make against the Conservative Government's appropriation of white, English national identity; and that being the case, it is not really surprising that the response is utterly riddled with contradiction.”(2) With a cult following built on sex appeal, but with lyrics that were more emotional, sharply smart, and humorous, the group built their largest audience from a generation that came of age under a conservation era of Thatcherism.

The politics of The Smiths lyrics were not overt, just plainly present with a tone of quiet angst glossing their surfaces. They caused youth to rally in silent opposition against the administration's conservative notion of British national identity. And, having been born in 1970, it's clear that Collins unashamedly includes himself in this group. Today, The Smiths now boast legions of followers from around the world, including Turkey.

But what might this critical study of The Smiths mean for Collins' project? What is articulated by having young Turkish adults perform The Smiths' songs in front of an array of hokey landscapes? One could argue that because these Turkish youth know the lyrics, the works are a testament to the impact of a pop cultural hegemony, making tangible the ever-enveloping process of westernization, not to mention the complications revolving around the ongoing negotiations that will eventually admit Turkey into the EU. But they go further, confounding any simple assessment, and showing that music (e.g that of the The Smiths) can be just as emotionally or politically powerful regardless of where or who the listener might be. This is underscored by the landscape backdrops, which dislocate the singers, allowing them to perform without a definitive connection to any nation or ethnicity. Each offers his or her own personal nuances to what is otherwise a collectively felt feeling of alienation and disillusionment, these being emotions that many younger people identify with regardless of what nation they live in or where their ancestry may be.

Dünya Dinlemiyor shows us that identity is never simple and singular. Instead, it is revealed to be a multiple entity, formed by innumerable bonds, linkages, contradictions and associations. And, yet, through this multiplicity, these Turkish singers croon with the same intensity that Smiths' fans did nearly two decades prior, perhaps in recognition of their own complicated relationship to the conservative values of the regime in which they live.

At the end of the day, Collins’ videos are easy to champion. It is work that is aesthetically charming and eloquent, but it also posits challenging, mobius-strip-style questions, and is bound to generate some response in today's contemporary art world. The works are not reassurances as they provide no sound answers, they continually pivot, never to be fully identified. Unlike the bulk of contemporary art, Dünya Dinlemiyor proves that Collins isn't averse to walking down that path, of making queries into culturally relevant, and even political content. It's a breath of fresh air when one considers how crucial it is now for contemporary artists to forget the market and instead work towards new possibilities for reinserting the political back into art. Collins has repeatedly accomplished this, and it's a feat that has allowed him to emerge as a bellwether.

1. Dawsey, Jill. New Work: Phil Collins (Exhibition Brochure). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 2006.

2. Stringer, Julian. The Smiths: Repressed (But Remarkably Dressed) Popular Music, Vol. 11, No. 1. (January 1992) p. 15-26 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 21.

Radical Software

Radical Software, organized by Will Bradley, puts together the Art, Technology, and the Bay Area Underground. After an initial viewing I wanted more time, so I came back for second look.

The show is free form, allows the viewer to dive into the material, and gives the viewer few opportunities to be told what to do. “Information wants to be free“ RIGHT ON? LEFT ON! Okay take back the RIGHT. RIGHT ON! However the trade off for me, the viewer and a member of this Bay Area Art scene, is that I want to dig deeper. This was a treasure room of underground politics, activism, and videos and if supplementary information was not included in the exhibition, then I would like the exhibition to lead me to more resources outside of it.

Back to the Treasure room: Getting to see original San Francisco Mime Troupe Posters, Ant Farm Periodicals (which I have seen before in the Ant Farm retrospective at BAM), and other original periodicals including information on Collective Memory in the Bay Area, which lead to the sharing of information that we now know of on the Internet. Some of the Contemporary Artists include Amy Balkin, Josh On, and SuperFlex all of whom are making strong Art/Work that is figuring out present day strategies for navigating our current social political climate. Here in this show their work gets overloaded with the experimental film and video, documentary which material blows my mind.

Highlights:
Interviews including one with Abbie Hoffman at the time of the Chicago 7 Trial, people on the streets in the early 70’s, Protests and Rallies, more expansive Ant Farm inflatable footage, Pregnancy Massage videos, psychedelic videos. As an artist making videos, I want to know who or what group made which videos. Post these videos on UBU.web afterwards, make them free. I haven't seen these videos before and this was a one of kind experience, even though headsets were mis-wired.

Timothy Leary/Electronics Arts, Mind Mirror video Game on a Commodore 64 CPU system, never thought I would run a program off a real floppy disc ever again.

Most of All:
Ferdinand Kriwet’s 'Apollovision' 1969-2005 and 'Campaign' 1972/73-2005. Kriwet born in Dussledorf in 1942, a multimedia artist and poet who has produced many seminal films and sound works for radio and television, in particular throughout the 1960's and 1970's.

Digging Deeper on line:

Apollovision' created while in America at the time of the moon launch, “his aim being to compose a work of perception derived from all information he gathered on radio, television and newspaper about the Apollo 11 launch.” He describes these films as "Bild-Ton-Collage" sound-picture-collages, and in parallel Kriwet developed concrete poetry, radio pieces composed of noise and sound bite samples and publications. Kriwet's works are an attempt at communicating an idea of listening to something that constantly surrounds us on short, medium and long wave frequencies. His politically engaged and avant-garde approach was influenced by aesthetic and Conceptual currents in Constructivism, New Music, Beat Generation and Pop.

Adding to this I am currently in the midst of constantly revisiting the campaign of 2004 and its social/ political impact not only on the country but specifically its divisive tactics that are involved within my own family. After reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign of ’72 and getting an in depth articulate shifted perspective of this Presidential Election, Kriwet’s 'Campaign' 1972 condenses the entire 1972 presidential election into a 15 min richly saturated video collage.

Apollovision and 'Campaign' 1972 are explosive, the edits are quick, include great fonts showing Dates and Times changing rapidly, and segments are repeated to create richly layered collages. Medium Cool 1969 and Parallax View 1974 (two films I greatly admire) both have richly saturated montages of "America" in them, Kriwet’s videos take the Cake. The repetition of images in America, from our Race to Space, Baseball, Presidents, News, Sound Bites, all come together to break down the IDEA "AMERICA" in the MEDIA. These video works show the over saturation of media in 1969 and 1972, but most of all what is to come.

Contemporary Artists in the show you should check out:
Amy Balkin:
Several projects listed here:
http://www.wattis.org/exhibitions/2005/balkin/index.html

Josh On:
http://www.theyrule.net/
http://www.futurefarmers.com/josh/

SuperFlex:
http://www.superflex.net/

Look up more artists and Groups from the show here:
http://www.wattis.org/exhibitions/2006/software/

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