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Esther Pearl Watson: Listen! Do You Hear the Weirding Field?

by Janell Hughes

These are different UFOs. Esther Pearl Watson, through delicate 8” by 10” acrylic paintings, glitter, aluminum foil and descriptive titling, gave the Flying Saucer character. Or, rather, many characters, as they are as varied as any other grouping of personified things.

One such landed on a farm, caused “mischief, and took off”. Others were Lady Saucers, but only in CA, and some were painted entirely with glitter. Glitter is a material that can add a level of silly or fun to almost anything, and the thought of a flying saucer or car sparkling across the sky or street is definitely that. One piece is an array of flying saucer shapes in various small sizes. They are cut out of aluminum foil and hang about two inches from the wall around a square panel upholstered in a sparkly dark blue fabric --the starry night sky surrounded by flying saucers. Where else would they live but beyond the edge of the universe? Or as the title, Foil saucers that dance around a square Universe., suggests, where else would they dance?

The use of aluminum foil in many of the pieces brings me to two places. The first is the dexterity of aluminum foil; it can be folded into a miniature boat or airplane or, depending on who you ask, prevent other-worldly signals from accessing the human brain. The second is the kitchen, wrapping left-overs and covering casserole dishes. Protecting and insulating.

Beer can hunting. Sasche, Texas, Saturday, December 17, 1988., is a collection of drawings done in pen on the insides of what looks like cardboard food packaging. The drawings are in the same simplistic style as the paintings and use the same imagery- abandoned cars, empty lots, scenes with open spaces and buildings that evoke a feeling of rural life.

Back to the paintings, the only car painted in glitter is the only one that still runs. All of the cars, including the glittery one, are modest sedans with slightly boxy shapes, nothing fancy; these are cars made for transportation. There are two series of paintings with glittery flying saucers. One day everyone will have flying saucers and they will have many lights and beautiful colors. Did I ever tell you that one day everyone will have flying saucers? I did? Well, I was just thinking how nice it'll be. The glittery saucers along with the glittery car sparkle us off to Utopia. Maybe this is Slumberland, Little Nemo flying on his four-poster bed trailing stars. The figures dancing around these flying saucers appear to be celebrating their arrival. Maybe they see them as a way to go anywhere and not be stuck in Sasche, TX.

There are no sparkly, benevolent saucers in Texas if the paintings are to be believed. They are in Pasadena and Sierra Madre, CA and amidst dancing figures. Elsewhere there are destructive and mischievous flying saucers. One hovers in The house on Masters St. has been knocked down. There is only a field where it once stood., implying that it is the reason the house is gone.

The painting that shares the title of the show has no flying saucers, no cars, no glitter, and no dancing people. It has aluminum clouds, funneled towards the bottom like tornadoes but not touching the ground. Below is a long view of a fenced-in field at dusk. The Weirding Field waits.

Ana Garcia: Mid-Residency

by Vivian Lin

A self portrait of Ana Garcia hangs in the center of a wall of color photographs of various sizes. The image of Garcia is hung several inches above the rest, claiming her place as the orchestrator of the images that extend to her left and to her right. In the self portrait, her face and left hand stand in dramatic contrast to her black hair, black clothing, black background, black gag placed across her mouth. Her eyes gaze steadily, directly at me, cable release poised in her left hand--her claim to agency, suggestive of the power of voice through image making. Even if one has been silenced, has been robbed of visibility, one finds a means to express herself. This central image, the only one amongst the group taken in a constructed studio space, serves as the anchor from which to draw meaning and to make relationships to the images on the left and right.

Playing the game of what are the similarities, what are the differences, I start to make meaning: Garcia is photographing the working class Hispanic community in Los Angeles and pointing out who has agency of voice, and who does not, and who claims it anyway in spite of the oppressive nature of the dominant mainstream culture. Garcia suggests that the dominant culture grants babies and protesters the right to a voice. Directly to the left of the self portrait is a photograph of a baby being held by the mother. The baby could be crying, could be making sounds of joy, no matter, this baby is making noise! The allusion to noise starts from the central “O” of the baby’s mouth, amplified by the circular patterns around the collar of his sweater, radiating blues, purples, and pinks, magnified by the fact that the baby nearly fills up the entire frame of the picture.

Along with babies, protesters are also granted a voice. There are two photographs of the Hispanic community speaking out against the recent scandal of the city council members in the city of Bell. One of the documentary style photographs is of a protest, made up of mostly Hispanic mothers and children. Male protesters are also present, lurking behind in the shadows of the crowd. The protesters are holding up numerous signs that declare a variety of grievances. On the right edge of the image stands a Caucasian male news reporter, dressed in a suit, adjusting his ear piece, tuned out from the crowd. A reflector directs the warm California rays to fill his shadows, to properly light him as he prepares to address the world. The pole upholding the reflector serves as a visual separation between the reporter and the crowd, as he stands in front of their banners of protest. The message of the protesters reaches the larger community only through the filter of the mainstream media.

Juxtaposed against the images that portray members of the community attempting to voice themselves, Garcia intersperses three portraits. These individuals are obscured, as they place their hands between their faces and the lens of the camera and turn away. Garcia implies that those who are left without a voice are the Hispanic youth. Photographed against the background of the exterior of their homes, they have no space in the public sphere and are either discouraged to vocalize their thoughts or shamed into silence.

Playing against the array of images depicting an attempt at claiming one’s voice, Garcia reserves an entire adjacent wall for a single image. Garcia grants the middle aged Hispanic man, whose back is covered in an array of tattoos, with the largest image of all, and supplies headphones for the viewer to actually hear a voice. She suggests that he is the only person among the array of members of the minority community who claims his voice without asking for permission from the mainstream community. His voice is doubly heard, literally through the headphones as he talks about his relationship to his tattoos, and visually through the tattoos themselves that serve as symbols of his life as a man on the periphery of society.

Altogether, these images are gentle probings into the agency of voice amongst the Hispanic working class. They don’t scream at me in the voice of protest. They nudge. They politely suggest that I consider who has voice? Who has agency? Who is the largely invisible authority of the dominant race and class that grants what kind of agency to which members of the working class minority community and withholds agency from others? What are the “proper” channels of voice, and who sidesteps those channels and uncompromisingly claim a voice of their own?

Rineke Dijkstra: I see a Woman Crying [Weeping Woman]

by Christopher Golden

How do we view art— physically, emotionally— and what are the parameters for constructing an opinion of art, both as an individual and as a member of shared space? These fundamental questions lie at the heart of Rineke Dijkstra’s I see a Woman Crying [Weeping Woman].

I was presented with three side-by-side frames of a young group of school children positioned in front of a white wall. There were both boys and girls, some sitting, others standing. Their faces were young, clearly tracing the brink of puberty. Dressed in uniforms— a white collared shirts, a red ties, and a gray cardigans— slightly ruffled, they wore the seasoned look of uniformed students.

Having sat down part way through the video, I stayed to watch from the beginning. I watched well into the third loop. I was taking my time. Distracted by my original intention to rest, it wasn’t until well into the second viewing that I found myself caught in the emotion of what the students were saying. And it was in that moment that I began to articulate my own physical and emotional response. I began piecing together the various parts. I was constructing an interpretation of art in tandem with the students.

The video fades in from complete whiteness, across the three frames, and presents a landscape of school children. Though it was not clear at first, I quickly realized that I was seeing various framings of the same scene. The framing changed throughout the video, cutting in and out, giving both expansive shots of the group (though never the whole at once) as well as close-ups of individuals.

Containing them.

Isolating their experience.

At once, an individual thinker, and a mind that is a part of a collective voice.

The students stared intently at something “stage left,” just below the camera’s line of sight. At first there was a great silence, one that is often found at the beginning of a thought that precedes a moment of realization. The students began to slowly describe something (I was immediately aware of their thick English accents, and was glad subtitles were provided), first the form and then various colors. Each student building his or her description from what had previously been said. Voices overlap, cut each other off, and inform the next thought and become nearly indistinguishable.

“Parts of a Mouth. A chin. Around the Mouth there’s fingers.”

“I can see the hair, and different colors.”

“There’s loads of different colors in the picture.”

“I can see different colors, shapes, and feelings in the picture.”

“I can see all the shapes that make parts of the face.”

“I think she looks a bit scared.”

“It looks like she’s been to a wedding and then she’s gotten lonely.”

“Yeah, and like she went to a wedding and she’s done something wrong, like…stolen cake or something.” A shared giggle waves through their faces. Then there is a pause.

“She got abandoned.”

“Yeah.”

“When she was a child or something.”

“No one likes her…people are scared of her. You know, like…people don’t want to be with her.”

They go on describing the work in this way, building on each others thoughts, slowly digging through an interpretation. The students had become animated by this work of art. Telling a story of their own, of the art, and informing each other’s tales. They were mining their emotional history and finding the pieces that link them together and to the work of art.

Art is simple. Art is complicated. Art is funny. Art is sad. Art (at its best) compels us to search the caverns of our mind for the emotional and physical language we use to articulate the experience of viewing art. These findings vary from the most mundane, to the most deeply personal. Dijkstra has shown the beauty in this exploration.

I left refreshed.

In need of repose for my tired feet and museum-dazed mind, I wandered into a quiet and dimly lit room. A video was playing. I didn’t mind. I’d tune it out, or so I thought. I was suddenly engrossed in the three-channel video projection I had decided to rest in front of.

Janell Hughes: Infestation and Connection

by Nicole Nayeon Kim

It has been more than a decade since I first and last read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, once a staple in ninth grade English classes. I anticipate a flood of disaccreditation following this brazen statement: I hated that damned book.

A bug. Brilliant!

Question mark.

In my defense, “hated,” is past tense. To whom do I owe— or does Kafka owe—credit for my change in literary appreciation and appetite?

Janell Hughes’ thesis show, Infestation and Connection, quietly occupies a portion of one wall within the Main Gallery at the California Institute of the Arts. At surface, eighteen wall pieces hang horizontally and in close proximity to one another. Save three circular objects, the artwork is rectangular in shape and, with the exception of four “drawings,” the color palette is subtle— black, cream and variations of gray delicately dominate the retina.

The show is comprised of text and image pieces; I call every piece a “drawing”— the text is handwritten, ink on canvas, and the images are largely created with needle and thread, if not with traditional “drawing utensils.” Marks are made on the artist’s chosen canvas carefully and deliberately. The images depict spiders, webs, human skeleton and bone, alone or overlapped within the same canvas.

Similar to the prose found within The Metamorphosis, a good portion of the artist’s text concentrates on verisimilitude, when detailing both landscapes—

Color is nothing without light.

I look out my window and all I see

is grey, black, white.

The world has a paleness cast over it,

and brown bark looks black

in contrast to the purely white sky.

— and character dynamic –

I don’t tell anyone everything

but I tell everyone something.

Though Kafka, in his opening line, introduces Gregor Samsa as a “gigantic insect,” Hughes allows the viewer-reader to move leisurely through a space of transition and nonexistence—

I turn off all the lights so I can walk on the ceiling

Twist my fingers through the strings hanging

midair

Invisible and dense

I can feel the walls just out of reach in every extreme—

one that is articulated through free verse, and less through literary devices found in popular science-fiction. The “strings hanging midair” reference the spider web, and foreshadows that a space where (wo)man and spider metaphorically coexist, can exist.

The metamorphosis of both Kafka and Hughes’ protagonists provides a physical escape from the psychological restraints imposed by outside presence. For Samsa, his family and job. For Hughes’ speaker, a similar social isolation—

I pass. I don’t twitch I smile I make

eye contact but not too much and I pass. I

slouch the right amount and I don’t walk too

fast and I pass. I ask polite questions about

how others are doing and say that it’s all

good and I pass.—

suggests, if not a physical transformation from human to insect, a symbolic shedding, “[rotting]” of flesh and evolution to a being that exists within a strong, self-made construct—a spider in its web. Both (Kafka’s) fly and (Hughes’) spider are lowly creatures in the animal kingdom, and denote each protagonists’ social standing pre-metamorphosis. However, the authors’ decisions to have human beings metamorphose into the bottom wrung declares a shift in who—or what—wields greater power.

At the heart of Infestation and Connection are Hughes’ juxtaposition of the human skeletal system and a spider web. Of the “drawings” sans text, the colorful and vibrant circular pieces of stitched spiders allude to domestic interior space. The speaker’s metaphoric transformation, and the comparison of bone to web, begins as “[the speaker’s] nose (is) on [a] mirror, cold… unsure if [a small lesion] is an average blemish or if [her] skin has taken it upon itself to separate,” and questions, “What is that? Rot?”

A “drawing” of a bone that is partly comprised of numerous spider webs directly proposes the two are equal in strength and function, but visually intimates the spider web overtakes the human structure by means of infestation—almost as bacteria cultures grow and survive as mold on rotting food (or human flesh). The spider webs consume what bone is left visible. The artist suggests that spiders’ physical defense mechanism is superior. After all, while bones enable man and woman to stand and shield vital organs, a broken bone can leave a person immobile, puncture and rupture the very lung or kidney it once existed to protect. A spider’s web catches prey for nourishment and can elicit paranoia and fear from the silly and susceptible human being that runs into it, thus preventing future disruptions. If the web is destroyed, another can be created and will be as well built as the one before. If a bone breaks, it never heals back to what it once was.

Blood spiders boil to life, weaving

platelets in an intricate and

hasty ease. Irked yet eager

to boast delicate skill.

I often overhear individuals’ misuse of the clinical term, “schizophrenic,” when they more likely mean, “a person who wears many masks.” One could speculate that the first person narrator, the “I,” found in Hughes’ free verse displays symptoms of schizophrenia. Though illness and mortality are themes touched upon within Infestation and Connection, I propose that multiple speakers emerge from the text. If read as voices from different individuals, the audience is presented with a spectrum of “believers” and “non-believers” of an alternative “circle of life”—the need for one (human) to reach his mortal demise to maintain the life of one (spider) more capable of sustaining and creating life. One “I” “[drowns] the ants. Each little pissant…with spray cleaner. One squirt well aimed flattens the ant exoskeleton onto the counter…poorly aimed, the ant just drowns…” and feels just as warmly about the “spiders in [her] hair.” Another “I” speaks greatly about sickness and her “stale skin” and the a “smell…like burning plastic…from a distant fire (that lives) in [her] lungs, feeding and building an ashen warmth.” The artist, then, assumes multiple roles and personality traits that exist in binary—creator and victim; strength and fragility.

Hughes’ thesis, like Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, smartly comments upon the human condition by highlighting that which is most (literally) stepped on.

Clifford Landon Pun: Gay-*Sia

by Scott Oshima

Clifford Landon Pun’s MFA thesis show Gay-*Sia recreates classical and Orientalist paintings, as well as contemporary advertising, by replacing the subject, most often a woman, with himself. Pun becomes the sexualized object. He reproduces a sort of neo-Orientalist image which is still very much prevalent in mainstream American culture, especially mainstream gay culture: the docile, effeminate Asian man.

In the text accompanying the show, Pun discusses ‘the veil’, analyzing it as a tool to control the gaze and a viewer’s desire. The fashion industry uses this concept of the veil to provoke a viewer’s exotic desire and signify sex appeal in advertising. It seems potentially problematic, then, to emphasize the veil in reclaiming control over one's sexualized image. Pun’s use of the veil, perhaps, recreates an eroticizing of the exotic and obscures the culturally-specific meanings of the veil, such as a symbol of religious piety.

Pun, in placing himself as the maker and controller of his own image, is defining his own desirability. He is aware that he is reproducing his sexualized image within an Orientalist stereotype. For me, though, the use of such stereotypical images, which have historically not been controlled by their subjects, leaves me uncertain as to Pun’s position in relation to this kind of criticism. The gesture of reenacting these classical images and advertisements – images discussed within a discourse of the gaze and objectification – suggests he is aware of the problems these images present; however, the work offers an issue without a point of access to further discussion. It does not completely place him or the specificities of his experience as a gay Asian man within the works and within the discourse. Instead the work reproduces, quite literally, the exact images of eroticizing the exotic.

By engaging in the discourse of Orientalism, the veil and the gaze, Pun makes broad claims about a shared experience of women, Asian men and those within the imagined Orient. I feel this detracts from a comprehensive exploration of a gay Asian man’s exotic desire and self-representation, and treads dangerously close to reinforcing the category of the erotic Orient.

But maybe it’s okay to eroticize himself as a gay Asian man. Because the work discusses identity, it is already working within models of inclusion and exclusion; to identify as anything is already an embracing of a shared difference or similarity. Perhaps embracing one’s difference as something erotic could very well be a form of self-empowerment. Sex-positive feminists celebrate their sexualities and bodies; the Bear Gay community empowers itself by celebrating and sexualizing the differences of their bodies. However, eroticizing difference or the exotic can disempower the individual subject by defining the subject as a sexual stereotype without consent.

Is there a way to embrace one’s own objectified, sexualized and desirable image without perpetuating and reproducing the same problematic images? The problem certainly isn’t only who is in control of the images, but also the passivity of the viewer who uncritically accepts stereotypes. While Pun is clearly self-aware and conscious of these issues, are these images critical enough?

Rowan Smith: HOW YOU ALL FEELING TONIGHT?

– with a composition and score by George Pritzker, A402 Feb.14th-18th 2011

by Malene Dam

“HOW YOU ALL FEELING TONIGHT?” the lead singer shouts from the front of the stage, spotlights are going around and smoke sends everything into a haze, the audience screams back in sheer ecstasy, and the show can begin. This is what rock and roll is about, the magic exchange between audience and performer.

Rowan Smith’s exhibition is not in front of thousands of people at a rock concert, but in a white room with spotlights directed at things we are to look at. The room is like a stage, transformed and oozing of rock and roll. It’s the highs and lows of a mythical trope we are all familiar with, and the stage lights tie everything together.

An old hat lies on the floor with pennies, quarters and one-dollar bills in and around it. Above it, one of the ceiling panels has been replaced by a starry sky depicting an unknown future. There is a lot going on here; does it refer to a song, the romantic myth of a struggling street musician, to Rowan himself, or is it all an illusion?

The star of the show is a wooden Marshall amplifier, taking up half the exhibition space. There is room to go around, and only from the back do I realize Rowan has made this amplifier from an upright piano. The piano strings form the front grill where the sound comes out. The electric guitar and a piano are morphed strangely together in this sculpture. It’s truly a beautiful piece.

The room is filled with sound. It comes from a small amplifier on the floor and is recorded from the pickups of a Squier Electric Guitar as Rowan meticulously destroys it, string by string. The electrical guts of the guitar are attached to what looks like an antenna. The sound has been reworked into a composition by George Pritzker. Rowan is not the musician here, he is both craftsman and patron.

A simple platform made of a plank of wood is leaned against the gallery wall. It is a replica of a section of a Neil Diamond stage - - the stage has been in storage at CalArts for years, untouched.

I begin to wonder about Rowan's titles. Each consists of several songs. Are they simply speaking about a mystical aura of rock and roll, the lives of musicians or of Rowan's own life? I’m not entirely sure; the lines get blurred, which is often the case when you listen to songs. You identify so strongly with what the song is about that you forget yourself. It’s a form of escapism. Rowan's titles touch on the melancholic side.

The Thrill of it all/Little Lies/The Misunderstanding

Teenage Riots/Same Old Scene

Born under punches (the heat goes on)

Star Power/Pretending to see the Future/The midnight Hours/Only After Dark

The sound of the Crowd/the Beginning and the End

Were these songs Rowan's escape?

That hat on the floor resembles the hat that I see Rowan wearing everyday around campus. (I realized only while writing this review that the hat was not real, but made out of wood and acrylic paint.)Does Rowan identify with the freedom and hardship of the nomadic life of a street musician? Or is he talking about creating a persona that we know just as much from the art world as from the music world.

There is no simple read of this because there is no way of knowing where the references end and the personal begins, maybe because those references might also be more personal and complicated.

Everything here is more complicated then it seems. Rowan is a gifted artist, teasing his audience with a play of illusions, neither simply sculpture nor rock and roll. But why illusions, the fake instead of the real? Are these illusions Rowan's way of mesmerizing an audience like a performer does from the stage? Maybe, but to me it poses the question of what is real. Nothing in this space is real. Is Rowan faking a persona, or is art in its essence fake? Where is Rowan being genuine and where is he performing? This tension intrigues me.

Fiona Conner: Reading the Map While Driving

by Marco Di Domenico

At first glance inside the gallery I see a collection of furniture, mostly benches. They are evenly spaced throughout. There is no clear path among them. I don’t feel like I have to walk around and examine every piece. There are a few people sitting and talking. I am intrigued but I spend very little time standing there.

I pass though the other galleries. I spend much more time on average in the emptied center space of them, each object gets at least a few seconds of my thought and time. I dig for more, trying to find meaning even if I can’t. Assuming something more is always there; my effort is always in question. I didn’t put any effort into examining the furniture. Maybe I was supposed to sit.

So I return. I am drawn to return to Fiona Conner’s thesis show. We don’t seem welcomed into the gallery, only one of the two double doors is open. Our approval is not sought. It is as if we should feel privileged to peer inside. It is Thursday night at CalArts; I expect more people, but there is only one person standing in the midst of the furniture. I know him enough to greet him but he is in a classic artful pondering pose, holding two fingers over his lips, so I don’t bother him. I realize I have my own glide and stance when examining an exhibit.

Most of the furniture is flat square backless benches, with solid clean earthy brown tones, wood, or black leather. There are a few small wooden end tables and shelves, all low to the ground. Everything is almost level in the gallery creating a flat terrain. The few backed chairs are against the wall so the backs don’t disrupt the uniform order. It appears Conner didn’t want any particular piece to stand out against the others.

Eventually, I glide around to the other person in the gallery still concentrating. I ask him what he thinks. He says. “I have a perversion for modern furniture.”

Fair enough, I think. I let him talk. He has been thinking and he wants it to be heard. He explains that the furniture is aesthetically perfect. The designs are simple and minimal. “But they are so uncomfortable,” he says. I question this for a second. They look comfortable. He sits down for a moment at one of the leather backless sofas. “How long can someone sit without back support?” he asks. He gets up in a few seconds seeming to answer this question. “How ’bout those,” I say, pointing at two wooden chairs across the gallery. The smooth curved wood looks soft. “The Eames Lounge Chair,” he says. “Maybe for like five minutes.”

At first I didn’t even think to consider them aesthetically. But I realize subconsciously I did; visually appealing in my mind meant comfortable. I get a similar feeling at an overpriced restaurant that oversells an ambiance to make up for their mediocre food. If the dish has an appealing presentation my mind assumes it will be delicious. It may take several bites to realize I’ve been stiffed.

“How about this one?” I ask as I move towards a black leather sofa chair against a wall. It is almost a cube wrapped and raised from the ground with stainless steel tubing. He says, “Le Corbusier.” I sit. I expect him to sit as well but he seems opposed, as if reclining is desecration. He explains how all these pieces were shown in galleries, an apex of design in their time. It is comfortable. I could sit there awhile but I would not want it in my living room, or any of the other benches. My concerns are solely comfort and Sunday afternoon naps. I think of my ugly brown couch. I threw a simple patterned blanket over it for contrast, but this slips off as I slip off into dreams draped in sunlight, always imagining something more. What is the point of furniture that fails at its purpose in favor of a superior design? These designs, like all early twentieth century aesthetics, are everywhere. Whether imitation or authentic, I’ve seen them filling so much empty space. Their uniqueness is meaningless to me.

“It looks like Ikea,” he says. “Like any furniture store.” I look out from the chair. That’s exactly the way it feels. There is just enough space to walk while making the most of the gallery. The walls are left blank. That’s exactly what a gallery is, a store. He asks me if I smoke. Then we are outside the main entrance. He lights my cigarette. We talk about how the art world is evil and soulless and commercial. This is satisfying for a while. But I eventually have to say that everything is this way. What’s the difference, even if art traffics in ideals? I can’t help but look down the long approach from the parking lot, the wall of windows parallel to it, the lights over head in the coffered ceiling, and the pillars that hold it up. Sometimes I sit at that long flat stone bench in between the pillars. I smoke cigarettes and I think about how cool this place is, and how cool it is that I am here. How cool I am because I am sitting here, and I am smoking so I must look cool. It is times like that where I realize how stupid this all is. I remember how evil academia has become. We talk of it; we talk of how cynically perverted we are by our own ideals. We talk of it like it is some new idea while we know its been like this all along, and it’s always been worse, and if the world ends in a year and a half it’s not going to be because of some prophecy or galactic alignment, it’ll happen because we did it, because we are all the most highly educated morons in history. It’s so ironic. We laugh. But then there is just smoke. One cigarette can only last so long.

I am not entirely sure of Conner’s intention in her show. We may have entirely missed the point, but I had an hour long conversation with someone I hardly knew. It made us think and talk. That is a success.

“I hate art about art,” someone else says. Somewhere else much later.

There is a dance party in the graduate courtyard. The weekly Thursday dance party is generally near the annex studios but this week the security shut it down. I feel bad for the security guards; they are nannies for overgrown children. They dance in front of us while we stand and talk. “What’s wrong with art about art?” I ask. He thinks I’m a writer; I’ve convinced many of this. He looks at me and says, “It’s like writing a novel about writing.” I laugh. There is a lot of writing about writing. Writers like to write about themselves. I am sure he knows this. I am also sure a lot of art is about art, but I don’t press this. I ask him, “What the hell is art anyway?” I am the asshole with big questions. There doesn’t seem to be a simple answer. He says, “Writing’s an art.” “Don’t pull me into your mess,” I respond. “How is writing not an art?” he says. “No one reads books,” I respond and we laugh. Of course he’s right.

I look at the grass past the dancers. In a couple weeks I will walk through this courtyard and receive an MFA. Part of me hopes all the crazy evangelicals are right. They recalculated and the world is actually going to end on May 21, the day after graduation. It will be glorious. Then I won’t even have to recover from my post-graduation hangover, and take on the summer.

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle: Mid Res Installation

by Vivian Lin

An eight foot long double-ended noose is displayed horizontally extended on a white wall. Above and below are a series of words hand painted in black, spanning the left portion of the wall from ceiling to floor: “N i ig ga hah…ne grow…NIGS GROW KNEES…” To the right of the noose is a framed portrait of an African woman, drawn in pencil.

My initial reaction to Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle’s installation is visceral. My body immediately recoils at the thought of a corpse hanging on each end of that rope. That discomfort is further heightened by the series of words, painted large enough to be legible from across the room, that point back to the one word in the American English language that no socially considerate person would ever be caught uttering: N-I-G-G-E-R. Approaching closer to the wall, as one makes out the portrait of the African woman, it’s easy to regard the installation as another angry voice pointing the finger at the injustice of slavery and the detestable culture it has instituted.

But when one gets close enough to read the panel descriptions — evocative of the kind you would find in a natural history museum — naming and then explaining each artifact in the installation, all of the previous assumptions quickly become destabilized. The language and content of the descriptions, the usage of the title cards, and the initial read of the objects start to meld together into an ambiguous, slippery space that is not so much about black identity politics, but about contextualization. “Mating Ritual Object from the Overderyonder Region of Kentifrica,” refers to the double ended noose. “KNI GA Tribe dialect,” is the title of the painted series of words. “Commissioned Portrait of Delia Keneyenye, the Late Scholar and Activist of Kentifrica,” is the label accompanying the drawn portrait.

These objects are displayed as if on the wall of a natural history museum at pains to explain a distant, exotic culture to the museum-goer. The panel goes so far as to state “Portrait is on loan from the Kenfric Historical Society of Kentifrica,”. There are multiple references to the continent of Kentifrica, the Kni Ga Tribe, and the Kenfric Historical Society, all written in the language of learned institutional authority. Hinkle relies on both contemporary codes of social behavior regarding the issue of slavery and blackness, and familiar institutional signifiers to provoke questions of how race and history are constructed and contextualized. Within the syntax of ethnographic museum speak, Hinkle interweaves, teases out, and reappropriates the language of racism.

One starts to wonder was there ever a Kni Ga Tribe, whose name was misappropriated by slave traders and twisted through history into that loaded word today? Where is or was Kentifrica? Would a double-ended noose ever have been used as an object to give Kentifrican women the illusion of power over their oppressor? Could there ever have been a Delia Keneyenye, as she is so nobly portrayed in this drawing?

The interplay of ethnographic language and the language of racism is here, intentionally confused in order to remind us that both history and the current language of racism are constructions. The gap between the horrors we have committed against one another and the tales we tell about them here leave just enough space to entertain, if only for a moment, that the side that won has repressed widespread knowledge of a place and history such as Kentifrica.

Michala Paludan: Mid-Residency Installation

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas”, The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, “Peoples of the world” and “Ethnographical Treasure Rooms”, Ethnological Museum, Berlin, “Art from Africa” and “South Sea - Collection Melanesia and Australia”. 2010 Video 15 min loop. No sound. by Molly Stinchfield

A large video projection takes up the entire space of a wall next to the door of a large, square gallery. Between the projection and the door is a temporary wall fabricated from panels of wood and two-by-four supports, which serves both to block the light and to make a private, almost clandestine viewing space away from the other pieces in the gallery. (The projector is suspended from the ceiling in a black metal filing basket attached to the ceiling grid with clips.)

The video is on continuous loop. A video camera is being walked briskly through the wings of several museums, we see African, Asian, and Native American collections bouncing by us quickly. We are never permitted to stop and look at the work, we must perceive it moving from the middle of the frame to the periphery; it is a challenge to focus on any one object. A buddha sculpture bounces by shrouded in silence in its glass case, a straw mask mounted on a yellow wall, a body sized sculpture of a Native American with ceremonial dress all jauntily float out of sight.

As we are denied the pleasure of examining the artifacts, the object of our attention becomes how they are displayed— as artifacts— mounted behind glass cases, like so many trophies in a high school gym. Some walls are white, some warm tones (in Africa), some cases so full of spoils that we can’t read the wall color. Also evident are the sparse populations in these exhibitions. A few people move out of the way of the camera, a woman moves closer to the glass cases, peering in intently, and a couple passes by us in the opposite direction. The camera is set to auto-iris, the image darkening and lightening to compensate for the change in exhibition lighting: one room black with dramatically lit cases, another full of a glorious wall of windows. We bounce through the glass doors of the gift store with the same pace and attention to surroundings and see Native American Art replicas displayed in a disturbingly similar fashion to the actual artifacts. The heavy handed curation of our gaze stands in stark contrast to the visual lack of an author within the frame— here and there if we are patient, we catch a glimpse of a tall, skinny reflection sliding off the glass. The rate in which we are bouncing creates a physical sensation: the cases of bowls and tools boinging out of the frame induces motion sickness. We have nowhere to sit but the cold concrete floor, and we wonder how much longer we have to stand there, feeling dizzier still. Because the artist has utilized a constant speed and path through the museum, without focusing the viewers’ attention on the work itself, coupled with the limited presence of people, these spaces are revealed as hallways. That the galleries are architecturally designed to resemble corridors becomes relevant— we are not watching a white cube, although we are standing in one. In the video, the artist does not have to jockey for a spot, does not get dirty looks for walking by too quickly. I, too have rushed through installations like this in search of my destination—usually the rotating exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.

These works are not considered high or fine art, or they would be displayed correspondingly according to museum convention, rather they are decontextualized behind glass cases in stuffy, narrow walkways and bizarre color schemes, reminding me more of the maze of the reptile house in the Bronx Zoo than a museum, even though I know that just beyond these exhibitions are a series of spacious white rooms with work neatly hung at a “neutral” 65 inches from the floor. This height is referred to as “Eye Level.” The exhibitions feature titles such as “Ethnographic Treasure Rooms” and “Peoples of the World,” the latter calling up the decontextualization, authorlessness and problematic curation of the “Family of Man” exhibit of 1955. I start to consider the places these works were made, from where they have most likely been taken in a less than ethical manner. How would the world be different if the work remained with its creators, rather than ignored here as some politically correct prize? What happens when colonizers deny people their own rich history? Their ancestry, the sophistication of their craft and the rick allegory of the symbols depicted have been boxed up and relocated to a place where nobody cares. What are the people then left with? A belief that their history is nonexistent, or that they can see it one day if they play capitalism right and make it to the US or Europe. And what is our role as museum goers? These objects have been preserved and displayed on our behalf, given formal homes in our postcolonial moment, where we recognize that it is culturally advantageous to “celebrate diversity,” but yet we have not given anything back. All the cultural artifacts have been pillaged, the natural resources depleted, and still we suck at the labor force of other nations to (among other things we no longer have time for) patrol our museums as security guards. What does it mean to treat these exhibits as hallways? I am a polite post-Fordist leftist intellectual. I can go there with you, willowy shadow that walks me quickly from room to room. I will follow your critique of one institutional space brought into the institutional space where I stand. Without a chair, narrative, or sound, I stand, nauseously winding through the cultural imagination of the museum against the wall. From our institution of learning of art, we are challenged to find solutions from within, to be aware of our privilege and our role in this art machine. May we all make our own bouncing way through the maze.

Vivian Joyner: My Mother, Myself

by Nicole Yamagawa

“Reality” show competitions typically feature conventionally attractive and intellectually humble contestants vying for The One. Competitors will make spectacles of themselves—compromise comfort to an absurd extreme to serve The One’s happiness, (sometimes literally) jump through hoops to earn The One’s praise. It might not be too farfetched to argue that anyone with a mother plays a contestant on their own reality TV show, with Mother being The One that coddles and rewards one day (or episode) and shuns (or “votes off”) the next. While complicated father-son, father-daughter and mother-son relationships exist, the mother-daughter dynamic arguably stands as one of the most difficult and delicate to navigate. Is it fair to speculate that women might obsess over their relationships with Mother Dearest because human beings are motivated by fear? Not of the mother, herself, but the fear of failing to live up to her expectations, the fear of losing her compassion or, worse, the fear of becoming her. Vivian Joyner’s MFA thesis exhibition, My Mother, Myself, attempts to address these complexities.

Joyner’s show takes place in the D300 Gallery at the California Institute of the Arts; the gallery is divided down the middle, the two halves separated by medium—upon entering, five 20 x 24” framed, color archival pigment prints hang horizontally on the right with video work to the left. (There is one black and white 8 x 10” photograph included alongside the videos, but this placement complements the show’s central theme, and will be discussed later on.) Let us address the subject of control—ever present in the mother-daughter relationship, and overarching in Joyner’s thesis. In this complex dynamic, control operates in two different ways. For Mommy, control is a mechanism that can help establish Her legacy, a passing on of heritage, and is a means by which Mommy can live vicariously through Her daughter. For Helpless Child, a want to assert control might not directly indicate a want to manipulate the mother, but the daughter’s relationship to Her, ensuring she doesn’t become Her, and the way in which this relationship is perceived by those outside of her—the daughter’s—self. It should be clearly noted that while premeditated assertions of power occur regularly within the mother-daughter dynamic, the artist does not, at any moment suggest a daughter’s want to, per se, “wear the tighter corset.”

From right to left, Joyner’s still images consist of mother wearing daughter’s dress, mother and daughter standing together by a balustrade, a portrait of the mother sitting in sand, a self-portrait (of the artist), and the mother standing before a mirror, primping for a party. In the photographs where the younger of the two women is not directly captured, a reflective surface within the landscape reveals a faint image of the daughter; or, the viewer is sensitively aware of the photographer’s presence—i.e. in the portrait, the mother confronts the camera with a look of familiarity and trust reserved for one intimately close.

The images present a loose narrative of the passing down of a mother’s legacy, and the negotiation and trial of the daughter that is curious to watch Mommy get ready in front of the mirror—Mom Preparing for a Party, 2009– wear what might be Mommy’s clothes and assume her sexual maturity—in Mom, 2009, Mother wears a short black dress and in Self-Portrait, 2009, daughter wears a pink negligee, its fabric resting in folds over the daughter’s thighs—the hesitation to accept her similarities to Mother—evidenced in the tense expression on the daughter’s face in Mom and I, 2009, where the daughter wears what appears to be her Mother’s fur coat—and the faint but definite overlaying of the daughter and mother figures’ persons as evidenced in Mom Wearing My Leonard Dress, 2009, where the viewer can see the younger woman’s reflection on the mother and, gathered from the title, where mother wears her daughter’s dress.

If the images are read from left to right, the last image of the series—Mom Wearing My Leonard Dress, 2009— suggests that a mother will eventually adopt her daughter’s fashion and, in some cases, the mentality and actions expected of a woman her daughter’s age (regardless of what that number might be); or, one might say that wearing her daughter’s dress indicates a mother’s wishes to live through her daughter.

But while most women cringe at mothers who still wear their tiaras from Sweet Sixteens, Quinceneras or equivalent coming of age spectacles, the frames the artist chooses to present her photographs in functionally and metaphorically protect the images and what it is represented within them. The frames could serve to “contain” an aspect of the mother-daughter relationship, but the video work—especially Powerwalking, 2009, the centerpiece of the artist’s thesis—suggests otherwise. Joyner’s sensitive representation of Mother Dearest indicates the sophisticated acknowledgement, if not acceptance, that an acquiescing daughter would have of her Mother and her relationship to Her. Amy McClain on Dinah’s Place 1972, 2010, both the seventeen-minute and twenty-second video and the black and white, 8 x 10” RC print, showcase a young woman in a cheerleading uniform. Upon close observation, a viewer understands this young woman will mature to become the Mother Dearest in the photographs towards the right of the gallery. In the black and white pieces towards the left, the slender woman performs for the cameras, indicating a productive self-awareness of her femininity, her physicality and her person(a). (Side note: In 1973, a year after Amy McClain on Dinah’s Place is taken, Simon & Schuster publish the first commercial edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves.# One wonders if the artist pays homage to or chooses to reiterate the theme of feminine self-awareness in the choice of her thesis title: My Mother, Myself.)

Complementing these works, The Bridesmaids Luncheon, 2010 shows the mother and daughter celebrating tradition with other women. As one of the younger women within the group, the daughter appears to be a subject that the more mature(d) women may project a trajectory of custom and of feminine poise upon. The viewer’s role while watching this video is that of remote spectator; the piece assumes a “home-video” aesthetic. As marriage is a ceremony performed and observed by an audience, so is this young woman’s—much like a debutante’s—presentation to the public. What all of the art presented on the left of the gallery, though created in different years—or decades, in the case of Amy McClain on Dinah’s Place 1972, 2010— has in common is the artist’s relinquishing of control over the camera to another individual.

Powerwalking, 2009, proves the centerpiece of Joyner’s thesis because of its forthright nature—visually, it is the largest piece in the entire gallery. In this work, mother and daughter power walk on a paved path amid green shrubbery and very few fellow power walkers. Both women not only don matching outfits, but both wear hot pink sweatshirts, symbolizing the passing down of a mother’s feminist legacy as mother and daughter move together as near-to-mirror images of one another.

The accompanying audio is of a slow-moving vehicle, likely where the camera and its operator film both women. But the audible tidbits from their sparse conversation and the expressions that slip across the daughter’s face reveal a mental distance, though slight, that the daughter places between her mother and herself. Only slight because they are, after all, wearing matching workout outfits.

While Powerwalking does not go as far to suggest that the daughter has become her mother, the trajectory of most mother-daughter relationships suggests a possibility that, one day, if the daughter never allows herself to become her mother, she will mother her mother. While forced patience with a mother’s “interesting” antics, mannerisms and un-politically correct slips of the tongue can encourage condescending behavior on part of the daughter—in Powerwalking, the daughter is seen smiling to herself and holding back laughter— so can manifest a more empathetic approach to her mother.

Joyner’s thesis show delicately unfolds causes that might make a young woman bite her lip and curl her fists behind her back. But when a daughter realizes that one as stubborn and self-assured as her mother might need a little mothering, too, a mother might remember a time when she swore she would never become her own.

Shagha Ariannia: Corner

by Jenny Lin

The entire gallery is dark and the only light comes from the doorway. A projector is sitting on the floor near the far right corner; its projection is small, black, and skewed as it is divided by the room’s corner, sitting low as if it were a secret tucked away. Shagha’s voice above me starts speaking, and I locate myself right below it as I continue to watch the screen.

“Memory is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining.”

A video, perhaps recorded on a phone, begins, and we are located in an alleyway with people scattering. Suddenly, gunshots sound, and people start screaming and run for cover. The person filming pivots, looking from right to left, down at the dead body in the middle of the street, and then stands still. We see his hand come from under the camera, covered in what we assume is his own blood. And then nothing, just a black screen.

“I’m glued to the computer screen, it must be 4 am here and I’m watching you. I’m running with you and I’m crying. I’m clicking away knowing the next clip would be even harder to watch, what if I see you in it? What if you get shot in front of my eyes and all I can do is “STOP” and “scroll back”?” What happened? What will happen? One video succeeds another, interrupted by darkness. The narration never stops, only pauses as each scene plays out before us. It is as if we’re with her in the privacy of her bedroom, YouTube-ing on our laptops the crisis happening in Iran, only to once again be greeted by the silence of the night. The video is only a video. The violence is seven thousand miles away; the terror, the turmoil, the protests for justice. And suddenly her isolation becomes apparent. “Let me confess something to you, some friends and I went to the streets too. We had signs and we shouted “Death to the Dictator”. It felt stupid! I felt stupid, shouting and screaming in the corner of Wilshire Blvd.” As we continue to watch, the videos repeat. In between, during the moments of darkness, she chants almost meditatively, “I have to go to sleep. I must go to sleep. I must go to sleep. I must, I must.” We emerge from this enormous crisis on our screens and remember our lives that are not part of that world. “There’s work tomorrow.” The piece continues for approximately 15 minutes, and as I continue watching I am desperate for more information. But in the end I only see what she sees, and I am with her in her helplessness.

Questions

by Janell Hughes

Between the hours of 1 and 4 pm on November 5th, 2010 something happened in the D301 gallery at California Institute of the Arts. An exhibition was curated and installed in two hours using abandoned artworks collected over the years by the School’s Gallery Manager, John Hogan. The show was viewed for fifteen minutes by its creators, members of the Studio Practice & Gallery Games class, before being deinstalled and the pieces re-abandoned (likely in a Dumpster).

Only the curious and inquisitive were privy to this showing of works-already-shown, a real insider event. The only evidence of its existence are in photos taken during the act. This is the kind of artwork where you really had to be there.

What does it do to claim the castoffs of another artist? And to display them? If you stick it on a wall or in a space and call it ‘art’ that’s what it is at that time- right? If you then place it in the trash does it cease to be art? If it was just an exercise for a class to practice installation and never claims to be ‘art’, but appeared in a gallery with open doors, what is it?

Jumana Mana: The Umpire Whispers “Please Play”

by Malene Dam

In the beginning of the video The Umpire Whispers “Please Play”, there is a short clip from the film Leon, where a nymphet, Mathilda (Natalie Portman), is dancing in a bra to the Madonna song like a virgin. The film is about the professional assassin, Leon (Jean Reno), who reluctantly takes care of 12-year-old Mathilda, a neighbor whose parents are murdered, and teaches her his trade. The entire film spins around the power relation between Natalie Portman’s character and Jean Reno’s, which is always on the verge of being pedophilic, but also parental, and technically platonic.

In The Umpire Whispers, we follow the artist Jumana Mana’s journey back to Palestine to her old swimming coach. We hear her conversation with a former teammate as they compare experiences.

The conversation between the two women becomes key. They talk about the power dynamic between an athlete and a coach. They talk about the desire to please him. They talk about how he would correct their swimsuit by pulling it down around their butts. They talk about why they swam: whether it was because they wanted to please him, if they wanted to win, if they just loved to swim. Their conversation revolves around whether or not their relationship to him was normal. Did he act appropriately? Did he step over the sexual boundary between child and adult? Or, did they invite that contact in some way?

In Jumana’s video, the women’s voices are distorted, a familiar trope of TV tell/don’t tell exposes. This history directs my way of looking at the visuals in the video and I begin to examine it for proof of the insinuated inappropriate relationship.

But here, Jumana is directing our interpretation of the coach. At the same time he too is given a voice. As the piece develops, we see Jumana and the coach sit and talk on a couch. They almost look the same age, late twenties to mid thirties.

He talks about how different all of the girls were and how he would use different strategies to make them better swimmers. Jumana was not a talented swimmer, but she was stubborn and determined, he says. He explains how he would push her via her own determination, by fixing the races with the other girls; he would have them swim slower. He also explains how he has a difficult time with adults. It is so much easier to relate to children, they are so easy to read, he says. But sometimes he has made mistakes, especially with a young girl he has coached, but nothing serious. In both the conversation with the coach and the former teammate, they talk about how the coach would give them massages.

Jumana stages a new massage. He gives her one and she gives him one. We see a close-up of their bodies--oily hands on naked skin on white sheets in a small room at night. It’s very sensual, but something is also confusing. Throughout the conversation between Jumana and her former teammate we hear how they liked him, desired him, a childish desire. Now Jumana meets him again as an adult and through the massage she is also able to revisit that desire. It complicates the situation.

Throughout the video I’m continuously evaluating him. Is he a child molester or not? This evaluation is made more complex when thinking about elite sports and the unequal power dynamic between athlete and coach. How are athletes produced? Does it take this ambiguous sexually charged dynamic to create a champion as young athletes go through puberty? I definitely remember having a crush on my coach when I was a teen and a competitive swimmer. Now I also sit with questions of how much agency these young girls have in this relationship. Is the coach/athlete relationship scripted through the roles of lover/lover, father/daughter, and/or doctor/patient? There can be fine lines between abuse and trust.

There is no answer here. At the end of the video we follow Jumana’s body swimming through the water. The water becomes a free and neutral space; it’s just about tuning your body to glide through the water with the least resistance. We begin to understand the fascination of swimming. But I’m not able to wash away my questions and discomfort. Have I just watched someone confront her offender or is this just what all competitive sports are like?

click image for full size by: Esther Pearl Watson

Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape, LACMA Fall 2010

by: Marco Di Domenico

The lights have been on hours before sunset. They can be seen for blocks in town. The altar is prepared, an annual sacrifice of the youth for the harvest. The crowd gathers as the players take the field. Another Friday in the fall; there is no where else to be. Football for many young men is their life; from their first steps until their last off the field. A pure team sport; every player must move at the exact same moment on every play. It only takes one player to miss his block and the entire play can collapse. They are trained to be many, trained to wear matching colors and helmets, trained to be faceless. In Catherine Opie’s photos we see into their eyes as they stand before us, one player at a time. But we also see them on the field under lights, numerous and no one at once. Catherine Opie is a photographer. In Figure and Landscape, Opie captures high school football players, in only four years from the waning childhood years to early adulthood. Her work illuminates issues of identity in communities: queers, surfers, and now football players. It’s a reflexive witnessing in Opie’s lens. Her portraits are mirrors, her subjects stare at us; their expressions seem so pure we think we immediately know them. But we know nothing but what we see. So who the hell does this bitch think she is? Alright, she’s good at taking portraits. I’ll give her that, but what the hell does she know about football? I played football. From when I was ten years until I was eighteen, I was a football player. I remember being a little child; a little slow fat boy running extra hours around the field because I was too big to play. I remember watching the varsity on those Friday nights under the lights. They looked like gods towering over me, red jerseys like stained fatigues, huge shoulder pads projecting that perfect triangular male shape. I sat in the stands, a child imagining the men I could be. Eight years passed and I was on that field. I sat the bench three games so I worked harder, training and lifting after practice, the effects of which of I still feel in my knees today. I walked with those gods onto that field. The same men I fought and drank with. The same ones I hated and loved. We stood on the sideline until we heard our name called. I put my helmet on and took the field. In these photos we see into the players’ eyes. We see what we expect to see, the stereotypical jocks—one stares intensely gripping a football, another flexes through a cut-off Superman shirt. In their poses we can see their insecurities. But others just stare past the camera blankly: a child with shoulder pads that are too big for his tiny body, or an overweight boy with his stomach hanging under his jersey; he’s too slow for other sports but he fits the mold for the perfect lineman. Another is tall, thin and fit but stares at us without expression. The field is always behind them. Out there, with their helmets and matching jerseys, they are only differentiated by their shape and number.

When we see the game we only see two teams, two sides, two colors. In a time when everything is polarized; it seems like everything is divided into two choices—besides the obvious political divisions—it’s Coca Cola or Pepsi, your team or my team. You’re either on the inside or the outside. Either you fit in this world, playing and watching, or you don’t. There seems to be no room for shades of gray. Opie being an outspoken activist for the queer community leads many to read this show in that vein and many connections are there, but Opie is saying more. In an interview she says, sports reporters at the football games laughed at her camera. They laughed at how small her lens was. Opie is not showing a minority group in a new light. She is showing us something we could see in any little town. She is trying to catch a wider shot. She shows us the landscape around the fields. The jerseys change as we move across America, but the field stays the same. In these photos we see a dying race; children in a matter of years becoming men, placed into helmets and molds. These photos are not about the values of football, they are about the values of our society, all our values. Whether we choose them or not. We grow into them; they become us.

by Esther Pearl Watson

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