Being (S.)

For a few weeks now, I have been living on-line as a not quite out of the closet, beautiful 19 year old gay man residing in the Midwest with my parents and attending community college.

I have proclaimed my first love on line. I picture him dark, longish hair, side-burns, cleft chin, leather jacket, clever, not smart and charming as a dancing cobra. I’ve wrote the end of the affair today, inspired by reading Genet’s The Thief’s Journal on the elliptical at the gym this morning. (thanks for this, Mark Amerika) It’s hot and dirty, what else? I already had the youtube video in mind before I wrote the post: S. in teary drag (he’s been dressed by his lover in an act meant to humiliate) slow dancing with his beloved. It’s going to be lovely: tender and strange. Sartre writes in the introduction that in Genet’s work, he uses a double to represent himself. “Each of them has the strange property, of being both itself and a reflection of itself.”

Yes. I feel the same way with the man I am.

At first, inhabiting him made me intensely uneasy. I felt myself leaking out and him seeping in. Contamination. But, now that the initial wound is beginning to heal, the graft is starting to itch. And, an itch, as we all know, can be a source of both pleasure and pain

(depending on the intensity of the stroke.)

I feel myself wanting to scratch. I am falling in love with him—my dream self. There is a woman on-line who could be me—smart, likes poetry, has a small child, a distant husband, and she is falling in love with him, too. Because, for one, she can, because he’s gay and nineteen and writes like an angel about how “the wide world had shrunk to a six inch plot of warm, brown skin….how (his neck) plunged past the collar into the white foam of his shirt… the scapula—those bones like fins cutting through the ocean of skin.” So, who is she falling for?

I think of Marina Abramovic’s Role Exchange piece (1975) in which she and a prostitute switched places—she--in the prostitute’s show window and the prostitute at the gallery. Now this is clearly about embodied identity, but what of disembodied identity? This kind of identity is much more about what and how we write (language) and the display of our preferences (books, movies, tv shows, music.) If I seduce, the framework is gay 19 year old man--those are the limits, but the rest is a convergence of what I want to show and what my “friends” want to see.

It ends at the body, of course—I will forever be closeted. A lonely gay man near me in MO wanted to meet (not just for sex, he assured me) but, of course, I couldn’t. I haven’t heard from him since.

Today I met young woman who is a children’s minister whose page is devoted to the suffering of children, but who posts intensely erotic poetry on myspace.

And, I think we are all leading double, triple, quadruple lives. Perhaps we always have and we are just now seeing how fluid it can be when the pieces of ourselves are given in bytes.

More of Sartre on Genet’s Thief’s Journal: “His stories are not stories. They excite and fascinate you; you think he is relating facts and suddenly you realize he is describing rites…His memories are not memories, they are exact but sacred; he speaks about his life like an evangelist, as a wonder-struck witness.”

Yes. How odd that before I’d read this, I’d already planned to film a performance of my feast day.

After the Fall

Video still "After the Fall"

http://www.alixpearlstein.com

Some of us at the RNDT saw Alix Pearlstein’s wonderful video work “After the Fall” at the Kitchen. The main piece is a 4 channel video installation that forms a box around viewers seated in the middle. Pearlstein stages (literally on a stage—think Dogville) a series of confrontations between actors and films using four moving cameras. The action is spare, aggressive—a shoving match that involves two of the actors ganging up on another one so that the “loser” ends up “crushed” under a piece of foam board. There is nothing allegorical or even very interesting about these contests. The actors are of different ethnicity. Some are dressed in a way that might suggest character traits (class, education, personality,) but others are dressed in indistinct clothing of the same hue that suggests only the possibility of an allegiance with other actors. In other words, there is no real narrative save for an all too familiar picture of aggression and humiliation. The brilliant part is that Pearlstein gives just enough of a framework for viewers to project their own experiences on the actors. At the same time, she stymies our desire for a good guy, bad guy, or even a story by repeating the contest and by using multiple cameras. This work has some elements in common with Omer Fast’s The Casting (staging, multiple perspectives, uncertain narratives.) Both pieces demonstrate what seems to be a trend: true viewer participation in the work. Of course, art develops alongside changes in technology and culture. So, it is not surprising that the harnessing of viewer’s visual and mental labor is becoming part of art making. We are (thankfully) moving away from the incredible narcissism of artist’s private world where we as viewers were invited to join in, but not really. This art is far less insular. Indeed, it requires the viewer to activate the artwork. (I’m sure Michael Fried is dying here.) Art has become not only a spectacle, but also a mirror, and, it ain’t too pretty. But, it's better than not looking at all.

This from Marjorie Perloff's fab book The Futurist Moment, on Fried's objection to theatricality in art:






It seems clear that theatrical art is what is required now. I don't know about you, but the idea of a wholly manifest, self-sufficient object scares me, it sounds like something the Bush administration made up.

WE ARE WILD FOR THIS MAN

and we think his son is oh, so, sexy...



we'd like to give them both honorary membership in the Revolution Nostalgia Disco Theater. We'll have to think of a name for the award (the Bruno, has been taken already by the SETI league), but it's clear that it will be in the form of a miniature revolving disco ball (what else.)

What to say about this clip except to quote Deleuze on Garrel which is how I found him in the first place.

"This may be the first case of a cinema of constitution, one which is truly constitutive: constituting bodies and in this way restoring our belief in the world, restoring our reason...It is doubtful that cinema is sufficient for this; but if the world has become bad cinema, in which we no longer believe, surely a true cinema can contribute to giving us back reasons to believe in the world and in vanished bodies?"

This is from Garrel's L'enfant secret (which is UNAVAILABLE!!!as far as I can tell.)



Here you see the quiet, intense focus on gesture and movement. Bodies, volumes, emerge from or are consumed by light and shadow.

Reading: lovely little essay on L'enfante secret http://www.rouge.com.au/1/garrel.html

Speaking of bodies and missing persons. I saw the Vik Muniz show at Sikkema this week. I thought it was a clever idea--making exact replicas of the verso sides of iconic paintings and photographs. I was prepared to be tickled for a moment by the trick, but wow! GREAT SHOW! http://www.sikkemajenkinsco.com/exhibitions.html




Muniz makes us, the viewers, the missing bodies of the future. The experience becomes an elegiac projection of the past as well as the future. In the here and now, to read the verso of Van Gogh's Starry Night is to evoke a personal history of the missing image. I felt such (bodily) tenderness to those wooden objects. To think that humans had cared for, made their mark, and passed on this object, was heart-rending. Not, because it elicited the lost aura of the masterpiece, but because it made me mourn the loss of the physical object in the midst of all its images. I thought about a day when it would be too expensive or dangerous for the painting to exist outside of some titanium underground vault, and even if that were not the case, how the generations to come will perhaps not even be aware that there is a difference.

Occasional notes on Cinema--Cinema and Cliché

"A cliché is a sensory-motor image of the thing. As Bergson says, we do not perceive the thing or the image in its entirety, we always perceive less of it, only what we are interested in perceiving, or rather what is in our interest to perceive, by virtue of economic interests, ideological interests and psychological demands (I'd add physical, too.) We therefore normally perceive only clichés. But, if our sensory-motor schemata jam or break then a different type of image can appear: a pure optical-sound image, the whole image without metaphor, brings out the thing in itself, literally, in its excess of horror or beauty, in its radical or unjustifiable character, because it no longer has to be justified..." Deleuze, The Time-Image

some thoughts on this: if our consciousness according to Bergson and Deleuze is by its nature, impoverished relative to the entirety of the image because of its subtraction by the body, then perhaps desire is an irreducible component of consciousness, in so far as memory (of other possible images) is operative. Now, consider the future with barrage of images and mechanical memories allowing archival retrieval on a scale that is not possible with the human brain. The situation of information overload can lead to a desire for stasis, a desire for culling and comfort provided by kitsch. At the same time, kitsch is like drinking salt water. It can alleviate immediate thirst, but in the end leads to further dehydration and a violent desire for fresh water. Unfortunately, kitsch also reinforces just those sensory-motor schemata which make us see only kitsch. A rather desperate situation which, perhaps, requiring a trauma, a cut, a break of some sort to reset it. Now, where does this leave language, which also has its clichés and its poetry? Again, I reiterate the importance of language, despite its tendency toward metaphor. (Unlike Deleuze, I believe in the destabilizing potential of metaphor.)


“There is no longer any metaphor, rather metamorphosis. Metamorphosis abolishes metaphor, which is the mode of language, the possibility of communicating meaning. Metamorphosis is at the radical point of the system, the point where there is no longer any law or symbolic order.” Baudrillard, Forget Foucault.


WE HERE AT RNDT MAINTAIN THAT REALITY REMAINS A BULLET IN THE HEAD.




To fool ourselves into thinking that in a cybernetic universe, our brains are not hardwired for wanting fixed points of meaning is thinking we can google our way to enlightenment. Bullshit. Thus, was Revolution Nostalgia Disco Theater born. For the full manifesto go to http://www.reconstructingmayakovsky.com and click on "Manifesto."

The Life and Times of St. Sebastian

"Saint Sebastian" by F. Holland Day, 1910.


St. Sebastian is the newest project of the Revolution Nostalgia Disco Theater. Born two days ago, he is not quite able to stand. We've given him bones. We hope the online community will give him skin(s).

We think we know how his story will end. But, to quote our resurrected Mayakovsky, "it's just that it never turns out quite the way you expect."



We are currently seeking 1) an open-minded amateur filmmaker
2) actor (18-21, slim, handsome, blond, or light brown hair, open-minded ( homoerotic overtone --no nudity) for youtube "home movies." We are in NYC area, you should be, too. Please send an email if interested.




If we were truly ubermensch we'd have no qualms about this. As it is, it makes us quite uncomfortable. We are experiencing waves of akithesia, that is the feeling of wanting to crawl out of our skin ( and into another's--in a kind of ontological cross-dressing.) We begin to question the value of our identity, we feel the boundaries dissolve. The theological equivalent of this is "shame." But, more on that later.

THE PRICE OF A WIG
Uploaded by brest44

To read:
St. Sebastian as gay martyr
http://books.google.com/books?id=YdaI7y2B3-UC&dq Chapter 5

Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nietzsche_birth_tragedy.htm

Amy Herzog Images of Thought and Acts of Creation: Deleuze, Bergson, and the Question of Cinema http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue3/herzog.htm

Resisting The Lure of Kitsch

Perhaps I am a romantic when it comes to the divine
word
(though I do think there is neurobiological data to
back up this bias) but I consider verbal
language to be the most
human of attributes. I am afraid of what it will mean
if language is reduced
reduced to genres of speech "cheerful, acoustic."
The foreboding I have for our future is the loss of
language. I can not imagine it. And it brings up a
terrible question of what the new human will be. Of
course, the Futurists explored the idea of new
languages, new ways of communicating, but visual
language is different from the written word.
Eisenstein knew this, all the fascists certainly did,
they couldn't wait to instruct the masses. In the
present time, the military-industrial complex has
evolved into a military-media complex.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlzdZqSVbJ4

There is an
aestheticization of politics on a scale that perhaps
only the clairvoyant Walter Benjamin could have
imagined. The last paragraph of The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction bears repeating.

"Let Art Flourish--the world pass away," says fascism,
expecting from war, as Marinetti admits, the artistic
gratification of a sense of perception altered by
technology. This is evidently the consumation of l'art
pour l'art. Humankind, which once, was an object of
contemplation for the Olympian gods, has now become
one for itself. Its self-annihilation has reached the
point where it can experience its own annihilation as a
supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticizing
of politics as practiced by fascism. Communism replies
by politicizing art."

And us? What should we do? Is
the only "ism" left "humanism?" What does that mean?
What does it mean to be human in the 21st century?

I am not an eternalist. I embrace the freedom that
comes with this ability to re- organize knowledge. I
think the lurking problem with this free-for-all
organization is that everything becomes equivalent, a
currency to be traded. Popular sites, those capturing
the most attention, will determine not only the
popular aethetics but
the "nature" of the world. It brings up the problem
of kitsch, aethetics and power. Without stability,
the seductiveness of kitsch increases. Not only does
it provide familiarity, it provides community. (The
relationship between kitsch and architecture
especially these very strange planned communities like
Celebration USA is also interesting.)


I take this consideration of kitsch from U. of C.'s
media theory site:
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/glossary2004/kitsch.htm#Figure%201

"The appeal of kitsch resides in its formula, its
familiarity, and its validation of shared
sensibilities...The self-congratulatory spirit of
kitsch can also be seen as a deception. Kitsch holds
up a 'highly considerate mirror,' according to Hermann
Broch, that allows contemporary man to 'recognize
himself in the counterfeit image it throws back at him
and to confess his own lies (with a delight which is
to a certain extent sincere).' By providing
comfort, kitsch performs a denial. It glosses over
harsh truths and anesthetizes genuine pain. As Harold
Rosenberg perceived: 'There is no counterconcept to
kitsch. Its antagonist is not an idea but reality."'


You see the problem. In the web-based world, there is
no reality. There is no antidote to kitsch. And what
does that mean for the art of the future?
Mayakovsky and Burliuk threatened to throw Pushkin off
the boat.. But, what happens when there are no old
gods to throw overboard or what if there is simply the
next batch of gods. What is radically different now is
the development of a culture industry and an economy
of attention that can feedback to alter those visions
in real time.

Artist and writers, and all those who want to resist, will need to explore and create
alternative forms of organizing information because
that perhaps above all other systems of "mapping"
shapes our perspective of the world and the vision of
the future.

Some very interesting examples can be found at
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/01/-map.php



Artists and writers need to develop alternative systems for
distributing information and collective/nomadic
actions. We need to explore and demonstrate how these
alternative systems can effect social space and the
construction of community. Psychogeography is one way
to transform a city. Perhaps we could employ a code
and a method for mapping (like the stickers or the
chalk or even texting where clues can be communicated
to everyone participating) with the goal being that
people will arrive at a certain time and place to
witness a performance (preferably something this shy
of legal) on a rooftop or at someone's house or in an
abandoned warehouse....And it ought to be one hell of
a party.


Billboard by artist Suzanne Opton

Movie poster from the U.S. Army

For instance see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Culture_jamming_techniques

Also
check out the pdf file of a mass anti-war effort in
1936 by Princeton students who wanted to be paid a
bonus with the expectation that they would be veterans
of future wars since war had become an endless
occupation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_of_Future_Wars

http://www.archive.org/details/PatriotismPrepaid


Another way to resist is to develop an artistic vision that
recognizes that we are still bodies in
space. That is why live performance is so important.
Performance acts as an antidote to kitsch
because it is happens to real bodies that excrete
sticky fluids.

I would argue that the other antagonist to kitsch is
poetry. It is the hardest form of language, it resists
easy consumption, at its core, it remains unfamiiar,
untranslatable even to the native speaker. Of course,
you will remember that Plato kicked the lyrical poets
out of his perfect Republic (the ones who wrote epics
could remain) "to educate our soldiers."

One of the most effective antidotes to kitsch is humor, (not the safe haven provided by irony)
but slapstick because it involves the body and offends good taste
and
parody because it represents the possibility of making
the monologic, a dialogue. This regarding Bakhtin's
idea of heteroglossia: If a speaker assumes another's
discourse and "objectifies it" for his own purposes,
the double-voicing is a stylization of the original.
The "stylizer" assumes the assimilated discourse to be
essentially correct and in agreement with his own
aims. Stylization turns to parody when the intentions
of the quoting discourse are somehow different from
the intentions of the quoted discourse. "In contrast
to stylization," says Bakhtin, "parody introduces ... a semantic intention that is directly opposed to the
original one."