Situation Comedy: Humor [sic] in Recent Art

The MacKenzie Art Gallery
October 7, 2006 to January 1, 2007
Organized by Independent Curators International (iCI), New York
Curated by Dominic Molon and Michael Rooks


Situation Comedy: Humor [sic] in Recent Art is a deftly-titled exhibition currently at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. It is a large group show put together by iCI of New York and incorporating various media, although one might not be blamed for noticing that this touring, American show of works by contemporary artists boasts a larger proportion of video- and media-based work than one is accustomed to seeing at the MacK. In this show the televised image, it seems, is everywhere--but this is not the only reason that “Situation Comedy” is appropriate as a moniker.

The curators’ focus here is clearly humour--a predominantly adolescent humour to which I’ll return later--although it employs also the pretense of academia, where any title not consisting of the formula “Clever Pun: Didactic Explanation of Actual Subject” is almost unthinkable. Indeed, some of the works included here are genuinely funny, which, I suspect, is not exactly the same as being “humourous,” if for no other reason than because people say “humourous” when they want to sound fancier than when they say “funny.” The point is that art-world pomposity is not gone from this show, it is merely thinly-veiled as proletarian comedy.

The popularization of art may seem an admirable objective. The logic goes like this: if more people attend a gallery, then more corporate and governmental spending will be allocated to cultural (gallery-based) institutions, which will in turn be able to afford to bring in larger shows and further expand collections, thereby providing needed sustenance to greater numbers of artists. The trouble with this contract of reason is that apparently no one has bothered to tell the cultural funders about it. For even though gallery attendance in general has been steadily on the increase, the Federal Government recently announced massive cuts to the cultural sector, including the Museum Assistance Program--a facet of cultural spending which funds large, crowd-pleasing institutions like the MacKenzie Art Gallery. It would seem, then, that government views popularity among a mass audience as a sign of independence and sustainability. “If you’re so popular,” as it were, “then why do you need our money?”

Nevertheless, like a curatorial Dr. Faustus, this show’s organizers seek to play both sides against the middle in an effort to appeal to existing and potential gallery-goers alike. I heard a number of viewers--"art-savvy" and otherwise--claim that it was great to see that art could be entertaining. It is curious that it takes a show based on humour--rather than fear, romance, etc.--to prove that art can “entertain.” Furthermore, this transmogrification of art into entertainment begs a necessary question: does art even work as entertainment, or is entertainment-art merely the shadow thereof; the cheap imitator; the fashionista who is unaware that the punks she seeks so desperately to emulate as she slums it with her $500 plaid pants are, in fact, ridiculing her?

Take, for instance, Block Watching, one of the exhibited works by Luis Gispert. A video work, it shows a woman not unlike a Fly Girl from “In Living Color”--itself a showcase of false costuming and the pretense of hip-hop--in an odd cheerleader/schoolgirl outfit accessorized with large gold chains and assorted jewelry. She stands in front of a green wall, picking at her artificial nails and grimacing until a car alarm begins to sound. She suddenly mimes as though the sound were coming from her; she is lip-synching with the alarm. This continues for a time as she performs a cartoonish dance which, along with the lip-synching, ceases when the alarm ends. She grimaces some more, pouts, and the performance begins again.

Gispert claims to be a hip-hop artist, though I’m not sure what that means. But there is a critique that is barely hinted at by this work, a critique of the objectification of women so prevalent in the mainstream of hip-hop culture (disagree if you want to--exceptions like Queen Latifah and Dead Prez only prove the rule). This critique remains a vague suggestion on the periphery of the work and even if one is looking for it, it remains elusive. In fact, the work doesn’t interrogate this tendency within the culture it samples, but seems instead to celebrate it.

As Jullian Stallabrass described the work of the Young British Artists, it "puts opposing elements into unresolved opposition."

And if the tone of Block Watching is irresponsible, the tone of the work which became colloquially-known as Discoboobs, Gispert’s other work included in the show, borders on the exploitative. The piece is in video and consists of a closeup of a pair of breasts in a white shirt. The breasts move--or more accurately they are moved by an unseen manipulator--to the beat of the disco music which plays over the headphones attached to the monitor. If there is cleverness in this work or in Block Watching, it is because it seems as though they were designed to attract the yet-untapped contemporary art gallery market of 13-year-old boys. Regardless of their age, the point of this work seems to be that viewers can laugh at the silly woman singing along with the car, or the silly tits “dancing” to the disco.

The exhibition is not without its highlights. Bob and Roberta Smith’s carnivalesque, text-based paintings instruct viewers to “Make your own damn art,” and caution us that “Artists Ruin It For Everybody”. It can only be assumed, because of the bluntness of their gesture, that they recognize the irony inherent in making art as a refutation of the status of art. It is a further irony--likely also intentional--that these works are included in a large, international touring exhibition.

And so the curators of Situation Comedy have tried to assemble and exhibit work which is both art and entertainment, in an effort to sit between these and reap the benefits--mass appeal and high-culture cachet--of both; in theory, the effete will be distracted by the illusion of street-level, vulgar authenticity, and the commoner will be satisfied that they have found art that is recognizable and not totally unlike an episode of South Park or The Simpsons (with the exception, likely unnoticed, that these latter two are far more effective in their subversion than any gallery exhibition).

If Faustus is their model, then perhaps they did not finish the story; I don’t remember exactly how things went for the Doctor, but I don’t recall them ending well.

More Thoughts on Relational Aesthetics

[For the first part of this debate, see Lee Henderson's "Some Thoughts on Relational Aesthetics" Post]

My apologies for not getting in on the debate sooner. However, I am glad to have had the chance to read the debate so far before throwing my two cents into the ring, not to mention the opportunity to pick the brains of those more informed on the matter than myself. The main points, as I see them, revolve around the relationships between art and life, art and audience, and, Relational Aesthetics and beauty/aesthetics.

With regards to the relationship between art and life, someone once said (someone famous, so please let me know who it was if you happen to know), “life is, and art means.” I agree. Art always involves decisions, selection and omission, each decision resulting in the production and implication of meaning. This is particularly relevant to our debate because it addresses a fundamental issue: to put it bluntly, are works that fall under the heading of Relational Aesthetics art?

Let me start by deciding that yes, they are. The audience participation, no matter how uncontrolled, is directed in some way. Decisions are made. This much is evident. There is form, and it is this form that Borriaud holds up as radically different from traditional art forms. Therefore, it is not fair to say that the social interactions are the sole place for finding artistic merit, satisfaction, beauty, criticality...whatever. Form must be considered, because, if the social interactions are held up as the site of beauty (or lack of beauty...again, whatever), then there is really no need for relational aesthetic art because social interactions exist without artistic intervention. We must acknowledge that these social interactions have been presented, collected and framed in some way. The critics and artists who question the form of relational aesthetics are not necessarily missing the beauty of the social interactions, but are directing their attention to the artistic decisions that brought that interaction into existence.

The relationship between art and audience is particularly contentious, and often comes down to questions of accessibility. Why is the issue so touchy? Because without accessibility, art risks losing relevance, agency, even a reason for existence in our society. Relational Aesthetics seeks to work against this gap between art and audience by directly involving the audience in the art. This is where I think we need to look more closely at what Relational Aesthetics reveals about the state of contemporary art. It seems to point to a belief that art has retreated into the institution, cut off from the public, and that we need to revolutionize art forms in order to right the situation. What better way to ensure interaction and participation than to make interaction the work of art itself? Relational Aesthetics, then, is in part a manifestation of a deep-seated anxiety regarding accessibility in contemporary art.

However, Relational Aesthetics goes beyond simply being a representation of anxiety by taking swipes at those things which it considers obstacles in the audience/art relationship: the structure and nature of the institution, the way that it defines the role of the artist and viewer. Even more importantly, Relational Aesthetics takes aim at the work itself. What we have is not the death of the author, but the death of the work. In the destruction of the traditional conceptions of form, the work has been destroyed as well, an object whose language has been deemed another obstacle impeding the interaction between art and audience.

However, there is no reason to believe that viewers/participants can read the language of Relational Aesthetics anymore readily than the language of painting or installation art, for example. In other words, simply having people “interact” does not ensure engagement with art. Furthermore, I fear that there is the potential within Relational Aesthetics to make art that, at first, involves the public, but is then swallowed up by the insular regions of the art world: I worry about the art being presented almost as a case-study at lectures or in galleries. I believe that would alienate the public, having now been turned into a subject for the art world’s gaze.

***

I am going to stop here, because I have tried to conclude this argument six or seven times, alternatively for and against Relational Aesthetics. Much to my own irritation, I have ended up in the middle (as I so often do), perched sheepishly on the fence. I hope that it is the result of a lack of first-hand experience with Relational Aesthetics, and that I will come back to this debate with something more definitive soon.

Angela Beck

Ingrid Bachmann: Symphony for 54 Shoes (Distant Echoes)

Neutral Ground
September 9 - October 6, 2006

Rounding the corner and walking into the main space at Neutral Ground, one is greeted first by a large, clumsily diagrammatic line drawing, mural-like, of two shoes hovering over two pairs of springs. To the right of this drawing is a row of shoes upon similar springs, mounted on wooden planks two or three feet from the floor. The row wraps around the space and the shoes are all connected via wires to a control box to the extreme left of the row. There are 52 shoes, although one may assume the number is inconsequential as the artist’s statement, indeed the title of the piece, lists 54.

The shoes do not move at first, or at least that was my experience. I wandered about the space for a short while before gallery staff came to switch the work on, at which point the shoes began to make clacking sounds in an apparently random sequence. The shoes themselves are fitted with tapping plates, causing them to make these clicking and smacking sounds--which fill the gallery, provided the work is powered up--when they are moved suddenly by the small pistons that support them. The shoes are varied, as some are workboots, some are loafers, some are pumps and some are even actual tap shoes, and they are arranged in pairs.

Considering the variance of the shoes, I was aware that they were all of Western origin--there are no “ethnic” shoes here, unless caucasian in its broadest sense can be said to be an ethnicity. They don’t, however, indicate much about their former owners, except perhaps through their varying degrees of wear, giving an indication as to the nature of their former inhabitants only by their condition. And if the shoes themselves are characters, this piece is a bit like being in an asylum. The inhabitants here have only two states--agitated and comatose.



As they clattered, I began also to wonder if my presence or motion was triggering them (aside from the initial triggering of the staff to activate the piece). After noticing no difference in their motion whether I was moving or static, I realized this was not an interactive work but a process that simply goes ahead regardless of its viewership. What is made obvious, however, through the exposure of wires, is the fact that power and information (in the form of instructions) is being sent to these shoes. This is emphasized further by the fact that the control box makes a noise almost as loud as the shoes, and certainly more regularly, as its relay switches click on and off internally.

If this work is to be read biologically, then it suggests a model of a nervous system, with the brain clicking away to make its limbs dance. The instructions are fired from the central controller to the connected muscles, making them move or remain static. This, however, would be a somewhat grim view of the human condition, because it would suggest that we are then only responses to switches. These switches, further, are only internal and cannot be affected by other organisms, other presences, and can occupy only two polar states.

If it is to be read spiritually, then the control box is a sort of animator, allowing the ghosts of the shoes’ inhabitants to “act” even after they have disappeared. They cannot communicate clearly with the living, but they can perform the pedal equivalent to moaning or knocking over a vase. Neither can we interact with them, as we can attend or leave but not affect the tapping itself.

These are, I think, possible readings. But if this work, on the other hand, is to be read technologically--and this is unfortunately the only reading the artist’s statement suggests--then it is not a metaphor or a model for anything but is simply a bit of an electronic trick. It may be an interesting piece of engineering... but engineering alone does not an effective artwork make. It is also an elaborate noisemaker; a computerized musical toy that no one wants to listen to. I presume that the irregular repetition of noises is the reason for the gallery staff to have this work powered down until a viewer arrives. While it may be understandable on some level--consider sharing an office with a perpetual tapdancer, or 52 irregular tapdancers--one wonders about the efficacy of annoyance as an aesthetic strategy. Put more practically, if the staff are to be the mediators and keepers of an installation, why present this work if the staff can’t tolerate it?

--Lee Henderson

click to go to Neutral Ground's exhibition page