toward an aesthetics of pleasure, or being our own muses
On a short break from writing a few days in my little-used office on campus, I pulled a book off my shelf called How Do I Look?: Queer Art and Film, a a symposium that was eventually published by a queer working group akin to ours called Bad Object Choices. As I started flipping through the intro (and remembering the Post-Stonewall Queer lit class in winter I will have to order books for soon...) I started thinking...
First, how so often reading groups, collectives, haphazard alliances, and erotic contingencies positioned below and outside of state protocols and academic censorship have often been the lifeblood of queer, feminist, and POC organizing. Secondly, how so often the works, art, and poetry published by these same queer collectivities--often with support from grants from the now-defunct NEA, etc)-- have often gone out of print, a fact I recall whenever I teach the aforementioned class and look up books on Amazon--Brother to Brother, Ceremonies, This Bridge Called My Back, Did We Come All the Way From Cuba, so You Could Dress Like That?--that are increasingly becoming harder to obtain.
On the occasion of our panel's key words--pleasure, friendship, fun, and collaboration, I have also been thinking, like others, of a paradox: that many of the most self-sustaining pursuits are not "counted" in the theories of value that structure academic life. In my case, this is the pleasure I derive from art. While the amount of art writings and peer-reviewed publications on my c.v. are roughly equal, the former will likely be counted as the equivalent of one peer-reviewed publication when I go up for tenure. What this relationship ignores, ironically, is that my looser, more experimental writings on black contemporary art are actually what sustains my more formal writing, in my book, on objecthood, avatars, and black performance art. There is no either/or, at least in my mind, of which is more valuable. And it is also in these pursuits, that I often enact a politics of collaboration with the artist's work that I engage with and a freedom, and autonomy, that is an incredibly important safety-valve for academics in the 21st century corporate university. This Tumblr series of posts, to me, feels like an extension of that freedom, an opportunity for us collectively to vent, imagine, complain, desire, and, hopefully, transform.
In this vein, earlier this summer, my friend Carlos Sandoval de Leon asked me to write for his upcoming show at the Cindy Rucker Gallery in the Lower East Side in New York. Understanding that I was in the throes of the book, we agreed on me writing just two paragraphs for the catalog, which he was self-producing himself. Of course, I waited till the day of to write it. The words, literally, had to be forced out....Obdurate...
You see, Carlos' work defies categorization. Obdurate and mysterious, his objects do not adhere to art historical allusion or movements and he, as artist, is not easily labeled (Is he a "Mexican artist," a "queer artist," a "sculptor," and/or"outsider artist"?"). His works are all titled "Untitled," he refuses market imperatives (he lives with his art and, as far as I know, didn't have a price list available at his recent show), and he, in his own humorous way, refutes easy comparisons (example: U: "So do you think of yourself as a Minimalist?" C: "You see Uri, those white guys had no soul...").
He is interested in materiality, specifically the histories of the materials he uses in his work (did I mention he also does construction work?). The historical ways, for instance, that plexiglass has been used, a material that frames jarring juxtapositions in his work, such as used Latex condoms and Chiclets. The mere rock that, on first glance, appears innocuous, but is actually a volcanic rock he picked up in travels in Mexico. The ribbon of yellowed paper, in a zig-zag pattern, that he made in a train on his way to Rome. The bricks, the melted coins, the found books he has defaced in black felt marker on the spines with playful new titles ("You Can't Afford This Shit" or "The Things I Hate by CE Sandoval").
In an academic world steeped in competition and canons, my ongoing collaboration with Carlos and his work causes me to slow down and ponder his objects hidden meanings (if any at all) and to appreciate the lack of sanction the academy has on our free-flowing conversations and projects. This is true, even as we continue to imaginatively devise ways to make the academy pay for our pursuit of pleasures, aesthetic or otherwise (U: "how bout trinidad?"; C: "yes ma'am!), especially now that Carlos has joined the "dark side" and added professor to his resume (he now teaches in the Sculpture department at York College (CUNY), a job he started last Thursday).
Earlier this summer, when I was visiting New York, Carlos took me to the Cindy Rucker Gallery on the Lower East Side, keys in hand, to see his show, to see in person some of the works I wrote about. The fan-that- blows-itself. The 3-D police watchtower. As I asked him about his work, and he unleashed streams of ideas, one thing that stuck with me is this: "I am my own muse." What if, in the academy, we practiced something similar to this? A pursuit of pleasure that funnels back into our writing and thinking, or if it does not, at least helps in sustaining it?
Uri McMillan ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of English, African-American Studies, and Gender Studies at UCLA where he teaches courses on contemporary African-American literature(s), queer of color critique, disability narrative, and queer lit and culture.
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