Throbbing Gristle by Federico Nessi

Transcription

ARTLURKER
A Miami based contemporary art newsletter / blog - http://www.artlurker.com
Throbbing Gristle by Federico Nessi
Thursday, September 18, 2008
http://www.artlurker.com/2008/09/throbbing-gristle-by-federico-nessi/
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Throbbing Gristle Logo
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A few years ago a close friend made me a mix cd titled “I Am A Shit-faced Bitch. Feed Me Drugs”. The cd
consisted of what I later came to realize was a who’s who of the post-punk and no wave music scenes of the late
seventies. For the first time I heard bands like A Certain Ratio, The Slits & Bush Tetras, bands that took the punk
D.I.Y. attitude and induced it with a dose of experimentation. All the songs were very classifiable, however, falling
under a specific musical style. All the songs except one. Track 2 was titled UNITED by a band called Throbbing
Gristle. In it a frail voice mutters unconvincing words of affection “You and I, You and I, Living together, Loving
forever… United, United”. What most stood out to me about UNITED was the unconventional instrumentation
supporting this alleged love song; the melody being made by what seems like machines getting sawed to bits. It
took me a few years to do more research on this so-called Throbbing Gristle, but now that I have I realize they are
the most important band of the last century.
Throbbing Gristle started off as COUM Transmission, an art collective formed in 1969 in Great Britain. Taking
inspiration from the 20th century avant-gardists, such as the Dadaists and the Fluxists, COUM believed in chance,
intuition and improvisation as techniques for creating ‘pure’ art. They thrived on being considered indefinable.
Ambiguity was key (i.e the word COUM means nothing or can mean anything). They stressed concept over
technique. Ranging from 6–11 members depending on the project, COUM experimented with a wide range of
medium, from mail art (popular at the time within the Fluxists), collage, sculpture, painting, performance art and
improvised and sometimes humoristic musical performances. COUM’s first gig was opening for space-rockers,
Hawkwind. As a response to the increasing scale of the drum sets being used by the rock bands of the time,
COUM’s performance consisted of roadies slowly bringing drum kits onstage until they completely covered the
space, not even leaving room on the stage for the band. Another early performance (1974) was ‘Marcel
Duchamp’s Next Work’ in which the group replicated 12 of Duchamp’s readymade ‘Bicycle Wheel’ (1913).
Arranged in a circle, volunteers were invited to play the wheels as musical instruments, following specific written
instructions and a score of colored slides projected by the group. This piece served as homage to, and a negation
of, Duchamp’s selection and presentation of an everyday object as a work of art. Where Duchamp rendered a
mass-produced object useless by transforming it into art, COUM transformed the same art object into a totalitarian
object, a musical instrument.
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Marcel Duchamp’s Next Work, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium, 1974.
Around that time (1974) COUM began to steer away from their more Fluxus influences (i.e their folksy, bohemian
humor). They were loosing interest in making work that commented on art itself. Instead they began focusing on
stripping down taboos and traditional social behaviors, a topic being dealt with at the time by the Viennese
Actionists (a group responsible for some of the most extreme performance art of the last century). COUM started
incorporating ‘shock tactics’ as a way to challenge repression. Their work began to serve as a search for
emotional release through cathartic public rituals, and they vigorously challenged sexual behavior. ABSOLUTELY
NOTHING WAS SACRED. As the moral climate in Great Britain became progressively more conservative, COUM
performances became more and more controversial. They aimed to work out personal taboos as part of their
performances. The body served as a bearer of pain and mutilation. They were interested in the public presentation
of private acts as a tool for psychological deconditioning. They approached their performances as ways to work out
their inhibitions, confronting the audience with actions as ritual purification. Bloodletting, defecation and urinary acts
were regular and often times too much for onlookers to handle (Artists Chris Burden and john Baldessari apparently
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left their show at the LAICA in Los Angeles claiming “it’s sickening and disgusting and it’s not art”).
Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge in Cease to Exist no. 4, LAICA, USA, 1976.
“Our story begins with an attempt to erase security. If you decide to clutch at a straw you must expect COUM to try
and tear it away. COUM are not trying to produce "good art" as collectively agreed by critics and dealers.
1.) Genesis stands holding a bottle of half milk half piss. He dinks it as fast as he can without breathing, if it
runs through his clothes [it] does not matter. He tries hard to keep his muscles so tense that they hurt.
2.) Cosey begins naked. She has open wounds on her breasts. She also has a raw flash from her fanny to her
navel. It is coagulating, about an hour old. She takes a needle and thread and sows up her breast cuts very neatly,
just as if she was sowing a pair of trousers.
3.) Small pools of blood thee floor amongst thee yellow polenta shadows of arrows. Cosey takes a syringe and
pushed thee needle into her sown breast, filling it with blood. She injects thee blood into thee top of thee cut from
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her fanny to her navel. It runs through thee cut into her cunt and onto thee floor. She sticks a second hypodermic
right into her cunt filling it with a mixture of blood and milk.
4.) Genesis removes his blood and milk soaked clothes. Under them he wears a saran-wrap jock strap over his
testicle area. He takes a hypodermic syringe and stabs it into a testicle, fills it with blood, picks a black egg off thee
floor, stabs thee syringe into it, empties thee syringe.
5.) Cosey takes a rusty razor blade and cuts a rectangle into thee skin of her forearm. Carefully slicing under
one edge she lifts up thee flap of skin and places a passport photograph of Genesis under thee flap, licking off
excess blood.
6.) Genesis takes another syringe of blood from his testicles and injects it back into his forearm. He does this
repeatedly, also injecting a total of seven black eggs with own blood. He is stood on a square of bark black nails
and ice.
7.) Cosey opens thee lips of her cunt wide and pushes in her fingers, masturbating.
8.) Genesis fills a spinal syringe with milk, another with blood. He takes each in turn and injects all their
contents in turn up his anus. He pisses into a large glass. As he squeezes out the last drop he farts and blood
mingled with milk shoots out of his arse.
9.) Cosey slithers through al thee liquid toward him, lapping it up, rubbing it into her cunt.
10.) Genesis vomits trying to swallow a 10 inch steel nail.
11.) They meet in a pool of vomit and join together cunt to cock, legs entwined, on thee wet floor.”
-- Genesis P-Orridges' direct account of the performance to Cease to Exist no. 4, LAICA, USA, 1976.
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Press Release, Prostitution, ICA, London, 1976.
In 1976, COUM presented ‘Prostitution’ at the I.C.A. in London, by far their most publicized and controversial
exhibition. It was the subject of at least 100 newspapers and magazine articles, questions were asked in
Parliament and leading members Genesis P-Orridge and Cosey Faney Tutti become household names in Great
Britain. The show caused a scandal as it featured pages of pornographic magazines with Cosey in the role of the
model. It also incorporated used, bloody tampons (meant. to demystify and affirm key elements of the female
experience). According to COUM the exhibition aimed to comment on methods of economic survival for artists and
it meant to reveal how ‘presentation’ had become and end in itself, how the pages from a porn mag can function
as art when presented in the context of an art institution. Prostitution provided evidence of the lack of
understanding between contemporary artists and the general British public. COUM immediately became identified
as a threat to British social values and interests. All this attention and notoriety placed COUM at the forefront of the
avant-garde performance art scene in Europe, now being asked to participate in festivals and exhibitions all over
the world. By this point, a growing battle with the British Arts Council (who had decided to withhold their financial
support of the group due to the controversy attached to Prostitution) and an overall loss of interest in the hypocrisy
and elitist nature of the art world, led to the creation of Throbbing Gristle.
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Throbbing Gristle, Beck Road, Hackney, 1980.
Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson & Chris Carter had grown tired of the out-of-touch
state of the art’s establishments. They wanted to reach a wider audience, a demographic that would relate to and
be challenged by their work. They considered the music industry a better outlet for reaching the masses. Their aim
was to challenge the archetype of popular culture. While still approaching music as an artistic medium of
experimentation, the band felt the desire to stop over-explaining themselves and start presenting their audience
with pure experience. They believed in the metabolic effect of music – how, depending on frequencies and
intensity, the body can have a physical reaction to infrasound. Eluding all forms of existing classification, TG made
stomach-churning music with no commitment to musical technique whatsoever, jolting the audience out of its
ritualized role as a passive consumer of the rock spectacle:
“Imagine walking down blurred streets of havoc, post-civilization, stray dogs eating refuse, wind creeping across
tendrils. It’s 1984. The only reality is waiting. Mortal. It’s the death factory society, hypnotic mechanical grinding,
music of hopelessness. Film music to cover the holocaust…” – Genesis P-Orridge (1976)
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Poster, 1976.
During this time, punk was merging into new wave and new wave was slowly becoming the antithesis of punk,
reaching out to the masses with synthy bubblegum bands such as The Human League and OMD. Throbbing
Gristle had no desire to entertain. With themes ranging from sexual violence and murder to pedophilia and the
holocaust, Genesis P-Orridge and company continued using shock-tactics as a means of communicating the
horrors of their apocalyptic and post-industrial society, leaving most audiences appalled and disoriented. The band
devised a strategy, developing an attitude and look that enforced an authoritarian image. With this they aimed to
eliminate the possibility of getting pigeonholed and thus affirming their goal was purely the communication of
information. Their live shows were presented as ‘Psychic Rallies’ (referring to the connection between the band
members and between the band and the audience). The tone and mood of each show was completely affected by
circumstance, making each Psychic Rally an entirely different experience. TG aimed to defy conventions, making
sure the audience never new what to expect. Either by using powerful, blinding halogen lamps pointed straight at
the crowd or performing within a blocked-off space, leaving the audience to listen through the walls, TG felt the only
way to keep their audience alert was to always keep them guessing.
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Throbbing Gristle, at SO 36 Club, Germany 1980.
In order to have full control of their message, TG founded Britain’s first independent record label, Industrial
Records. Between 1976 and 1981, Industrial Records represented the search for a sound and an identity that
suited the social and economic conditions found in a modernized late-capitalist Western society. It was about
de-romanticizing the music industry, presenting music as files and research documents, a library of information.
Industrial music (coined by TG) was closest to journalism in that it aimed to capture the savage realities of fading
capitalism. Based entirely on an anti-commercial ethic, IR relied mainly on controversy as a form of promotion. For
example, the IR logo derived from a photograph of the first gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz. Using
records as propaganda, corresponding regularly with over sixteen hundred fans and producing a news magazine
titled Industrial News, IR experimented with the lure and potency of power. Fans received advice on everything
from clothing to weapons and information on military tactics of control. Readers were asked, “Do you want to be a
fully equipped Terror Guard? Ready for action? Assume Power Focus. NOTHING SHORT OF A TOTAL WAR.
NUCLEAR WAR NOW!” As a form of defiance to people who considered they had figured out the “Industrial
Records sound”, IR released the single “Stormy Weather” by Elisabeth Welch, a song featured in Derek
Jarman’s ‘Tempest’ and by far the most incongruous release on the label . Also released on IR was William
Burroughs’ “Nothing Here Now But The Recordings”, tapes which experimented with the cut-up method
developed by Burroughs and Brion Gysin in the 1950’s.
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Throbbing Gristle: The Mission is Terminated postcard, 1981 (recto).
In 1981, after much internal conflict and an increasing disenchantment with commercial acceptability, Throbbing
Gristle terminated its mission.
Since then the term ‘Industrial Music’ has become increasingly popular with bands that adopted the imagery
and/or sound of the original IR artists. Bands like Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM have reached wide commercial
success in the last twenty years. What industrial music has become, however, has nothing to do with Throbbing
Gristle’s original classification of the term.
Fortunately for those of us not around when Throbbing Gristle was attempting to take over the world, each
individual band member went on to develop incredibly powerful projects, such as Psychic TV, Coil and Chris &
Cosey. In 2004, Throbbing Gristle reunited and has been touring and recording new material ever since, still
aggressively challenging social standards. They are currently recording a new album based on their interpretation
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of Nico’s album Desertshore.
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- Federico Nessi (Psychic Youth)
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Works Cited: WRECKERS OF CIVILIZATION: The Story of COUM Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle by Simon Ford.
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Video, photography, installation AND performance. By Thomas
Hollingworth
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
http://www.artlurker.com/2008/09/video-photography-installation-and-performance/
Clifton Childree, DREAM-CUM-TRU opening. Image courtesy of Locust Projects.
I think most in attendance will agree that this Second Saturday art walk, which opened the fall season here in
Miami, was one of the best yet. With a veritable smörgåsbord of exhibitions and a volume of human traffic more
synonymous with early December, there was a lot both inside and out to take-in.
Interiors were hot, crowded and for the most part boasted chaotic configurations from sculptural installations and
sound work to theatrical design and performance art. The two exhibitions that I would like to focus on today share
many of these elements.
Within easy walking distance from each other, Spinello Gallery and Locust Projects provided the majority of the
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night’s entertainment. At Spinello a multi-media exhibition by Federico Nessi entitled Emotional Response Can Be
Deconditioned, which featured a live street performance at 9PM, contrasted and coordinated well with Clifton
Childree’s sprawling installation DREAM-CUM-TRU and its accompanying performance at 8PM and 10PM.
Federico Nessi, White Light / White Heat, 2008. Diptych, Archival Digital Prints. 24" x 36". Image courtesy of the artist.
Using just mundane everyday materials like flashlights and hand mirrors and fostering a burgeoning regression
from digital to analogue Federico Nessi’s Emotional Response Can Be Deconditioned, though scented with a host
of universal and metaphoric meanings, talks simply about being haunted by the sense of someone. Arising from
interpersonal situations and the play between two people, the works hark to the shame of loss; to reaching or
searching for that specific something outside of one’s self - perhaps enlightenment or forgiveness.
Rather than burdening audiences with symbolism and explanative content, Nessi’s work serves plainly to
summarize; simplifying emotions into images, representative of feelings and ideas for experience. Not so much
sexualized as awkward and aggressive the images which depict symbolic light elements and a claustrophobic
blow-job scene are paired or arranged into a series that allow narratives to form.
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The exhibition’s title is ironic but also hopeful; this combined with the unusual decor and the masochistic
references evident in the work amount to a rare sense of exposure. Through dealing with the power of human
feelings and the limitless, dark potential of the mind Nessi creates a specific emotional environment, one with great
imaginative potential, where a rope light could be anything from a trusted tether to a tool of torture.
There is a present sense of insecurity in this new work which could be mistaken for self reflection should not the
pictures tell a different story.
Federico Nessi, Patience Is Brutal No. 1, 2008. Archival Digital Print, 30" x 36". Image courtesy of the artist.
Federico; this show really galvanizes what we can expect from you.
This show is obviously an extension of everything I’ve done. When I finished Wire Wire Wire I just felt that it was
something I wanted to keep working on. Most of Wire Wire Wire was all these different images that had been
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recurring in my head for years and that was their first incarnation really but, its ideas, universal and metaphoric for
experience. In this show there’s a lot about the play off of two people as opposed to being completely directed into
the self-- how certain emotions arise from interactions with other people.
So you’re continuing to crystallize and evolve your ideas from Wire Wire Wire?
Wire Wire Wire was all about the insecurities that arise from the tensions within relationships. It could have been
interpreted as moments of self reflection but they all kind of arise form these interpersonal situations-- like the
following the person on the map. Really simple imagery to go with these really heavy feelings; just kind of
summarizing and simplifying.
The materials you work with and even the film you use seem very basic, is this intentional?
Since Wire Wire Wire I’ve been using these mundane objects like hand mirrors, rope lights and flashlights and
representing them as simulations or illusions of energy; a self profane energy I guess. It’s all about this idealized
reaching for something – enlightenment or awareness – but on the flip side being completely conscious and aware
of it at the same time.
What about the look of the exhibition? It’s not exactly your typical white cube.
No, it’s a black cube in a black cube! After seeing the last couple of shows at Spinello I was really interested in
completely fucking with the space, like I didn’t want it to be just stuff on a wall, I wanted to create this interactive
very heavily installation based show.
All of your images, the people in them, are fairly decent; I mean there’s no gratuitous nudity.
Ah, no, no nudity but this is one of the images from the series:
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Federico Nessi, You Held Me Like A Crucifix No. 3, 2008. Archival Digital Print 24" x 16". (3 in series of 9). Image courtesy of the artist.
Is that you undoing someone’s zipper?
Yeah, its series of nine images and it’s very real! None of the images are really meant to be too sexualized; it’s
supposed to be this awkwardness and aggression. This is the calmest one and while its compositionally more
linear and symmetrical, the others have a lot more motion.
And the title “Emotional Response Can Be Deconditioned”, where did that come from?
I started getting really interested in aversion therapy and the notion of shock therapy and how up until the '70s it
was completely common, you know if you got caught being gay somewhere you were automatically sentenced to
aversion therapy which included weeks and weeks of shock therapy and with the gay rights movement there was a
doctor that was tried in England for subjecting people to aversion therapy and within one of his statements he says:
“Emotional response can be deconditioned.” So, you know, the title is this kind of ironic, hopeful..
In terms of you deconditioning the emotional responses of the general public?
No, just in terms of being able to change a feeling you know, like re-direct where and how emotions affect you, or to
have that control. I quite like to question the possibility of that control. And that’s what all this is about. Some
people will view it as this reconciliation with yourself and other people will feel it’s completely ironic and that’s
what the title is for me.
Let’s talk a minute about the live performance.
We covered a song that I used to listen to a lot by love and rockets called haunted when the minutes drag. I don’t
know if it tapped into many people but I was really interested in tapping into a personal nostalgia with this
performance because for me this song just brings back so much. It was basically an 8 minute song that we pushed
to twelve minutes, almost, so we made it extra slow and gave it our own kind of flip-- all of us performed and sang
different specific parts, kind of like abstracting the song a little but its was perfect for the show because it talks
about not being able to get rid of the ghost of someone, basically; and that’s what all my work kind of ends up
being. Like trying to get to this place where I can just be comfortable with myself and not be so tangled up in
someone else.
It was a one shot deal right?
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Yeah, well, I was in a daze, all cracked out and crying, and your reaction was really the first that I paid attention to,
and you were like “awww the technical difficulties” and initially I thought, yeah, that was a bummer, but the more
I’ve thought about it since, the more appropriate it was.
Federico Nessi, Haunted When The Minutes Drag, 2008. Live performance. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of Spinello Gallery.
For me the warm up was great. There was this long period where nothing much was happening until Victor
Barrenechea started hitting his guitar. Then when Alex Senf sat down to the drums and Ana Mendez began trailing
her microphone on the floor it all started to come together. The ‘music’ got progressively tighter, the sound got
deeper and then when you started to sing I could feel attentions were turning in but when the initial crescendo was
supposed to hit you lost the sound and I perceived a tension that carried through a few minutes. During that time
there were moments that you almost got it together and then the power would fail again. The momentum felt as
thought it had gone from a steady build-up to a lurching stop-start affair; staggering and faltering when I felt that it
should have been this great push of a wall of tortured sound and desperate rapture. This is what I thought you were
heading for and I could see that the potential was there to create it but after the initial crescendo was gone it
appeared as though members of the band were just kind of doing their own thing-- which I understand now is
exactly what was supposed to happen; however, in light of people perceiving some kind of fuck up, the intentionally
sporadic feel to the performance was perhaps misinterpreted. As a result the audience maybe didn’t key into ‘the
band trying to find each other’ angle. But when you started screaming you really came to the fore! That’s when
people started to focus in again. On the surface it was just novel to see an artist screaming in front of his gallery,
but for everyone that had made the effort understand your intentions then the haunted wailing, the veins popping
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out of your neck and even the initial fuck up really gave a lot of power to the desperate emotions that you were
aiming to convey. At that point everything formed this kind of golden triangle and started to work with itself a lot
better. Part of me still longs to have seen the initial crescendo but on the whole it definitely worked in the end.
For me, that yearning for that moment that didn’t come was what I was aiming for and it’s interesting because in
the end the power failing helped provide for that reaction—ironically I don’t know if I would have gotten that reaction
so good if the technical difficulties hadn’t happened.
I also liked the fact that it was also a group of people as opposed to a Sonny and Cher type affair.
Well, Ana Mendez and I had our moments but yeah, I wanted it to have a presence and I liked how the audience
spilled into the street and blocked it off with human force. That part of the performance was really important to the
whole interpretation of the show; it was a very aggressive performance which compliments many of the
photographs. Plus what’s fascinating to me is that the group was made up of its really strong personalities,
everyone playing is like the front men of their bands kind of thing, so it was alse like this battle of egos thing in a
very positive way because we all love and respect each other but when we get together we all want to shine in our
own way, you know?
And it adds weight to the argument, to your thesis, because rather than it being one artist with one idea it’s a
performance with a number of people saying: “look what we think.”
Right and that’s what I am really excited about right now. I feel that there’s this turn within this neo-romanticism
you know like there’s this whole new wave of new romantics in Miami I mean I feel like I’m into that myself
personally with my art but also within the music that I am listening to now that’s happening a lot[.]
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Federico Nessi, He Is He And He Is You Too, 2008. 2-channel Digital Video,10:24 minutes. Image courtesy of the artist.
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It is often ambiguous as to whether much of Nessi’s work is sadistic or masochistic and also whether his various
lighting effects are designed to be life giving or life sapping. His characters appear trapped in a looping limbo of
love sick languor that speaks again to the cyclic flow of energy we see throughout the exhibition. The images are
very simple; simple language to explain the way that the artist thinks and feels, and simple symbolism exploring
how the burden of people on our minds affects us and our interpretation of the world.
Its not that we try to make things deeper or more complicated than they are but rather that situations naturally
become less superficial. Its not that you enter into a relationship saying: “Im going to make this one count” but as
you get hurt and as you love, things take on a certain poignancy in a ‘the fundamental things apply as time goes
by’ sort of way; as you live you learn and you take that with you.
Moving away from the somewhat unnecessary romantic tone that some of his previous works have been
interpreted as projecting, and the ever present drone of Ryan McGinley comparisons, Nessi, with this exhibition
finally found his dark obsessive place. The mind can be beautiful and radiate light energy that transforms us and
gives us guidance but in reality the mind is a dark place – at least for people like Nessi who can get completely lost
within their own romantic purgatory.
Left: A mock circumcision machine - Sir Komsician - entails rusty shears in an open box. Right: Nuttin' Tu It, a carnival funhouse containing a
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glitter filled maze with holes at crotch level designed provide visitors with the opportinuty to grab anonymously at oneanothers nethers. At the
top visitors can poke their heads through a cut out hole, becomming the face of a video projection of a man with huge balls. Image courtesy of
Locust Projects.
With its turn of the century aesthetic and stridulatory animatronics reminiscent of a stop-motion Brothers Quay
animation, Clifton Childree’s installation DREAM-CUM-TRU is another one-of-a-kind show. Heavily influenced by
the vaudeville genre, Childree has spent over a year gleaning, preparing and constructing his latest creation – a
miniature, ramshackle version of Coney Island made from salvaged wood and antique curiosities.
"What I wanted to do with this installation is create the look of an abandoned carnival, There'll be sand all over the
floor, with rotting wood and vines wrapped around the booths, and the sewing machine is part of the Old Kipper's
Widow ride. This is a carnival where the machines are kind of like animatronics figures at Disney World, but they've
gone out-of-kilter with decay and have taken on a strange new life.”
And the exhibition is a landmark in more ways than one. As well as launching the 10th year anniversary season of
Locust Projects, Childree is also the first winner of the Hilger Artist Project Award, a generous initiative by the
non-for-profit to support Miami artists made possible by collector, gallerist and scholar Ernst Hilger.
Of Childree, who was selected from 32 applicants, Hilger was quoted as saying “Childree's work is based on bits
and scraps of autobiographical material which he recycles, reflecting the current state of contemporary art. He's a
visionary who looks back to look forward.''
Claire Breukel, Locust's executive director adds: “We were founded as a place to take risks, and while Clifton's
work has a certain shock value; it also touches on common experiences with a charming sense of black humor.”
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Clifton Childree (left) and MAM curator Rene Morales (right) in front of the shooting gallery. Image courtesy of Locust Projects.
The unusual exhibition also featured an equally unique live performance by Childree who dressed in a one piece
red thermal jumpsuit and a top hat. Playing the part of drunken carnival barker, Childree staggered around with his
penis out, threw liquids and attacked the audience; all the while keeping up his mock-critical banter regarding the
film he was screening. At times he would appear to manipulate the film dragging objects or removing people’s
trousers with a swish of his cane. It was clearly just an illusion made possible with familiar editing and deft timing
but done with a grace and technical prowess that belied Childree’s otherwise manic havoc. At one point Childree
jumped inside the movie (and almost immediately exposed himself). Childree in fact played the roles of all the
various characters as is the case with his movies. Childree’s is influenced heavily by history, the incongruity of
vintage life and his own unique experiences growing up in Plantation, Florida.
"I love how out-of-place people were at the start of the Industrial Revolution in London, when these ladies in
elaborate clothes would be having garden parties next to huge scary machines. And the early pioneers of Miami
were so amazing too, these adventurers in formal clothes fighting the heat and mosquitoes of the jungle. That must
have looked so weird.''
The brief semblance of a narrative often present at the beginning of Childree’s films quickly gave way to abstract
and nightmarish content featuring sailors, mad scientists and axe wheedling maniacs-- generally a very clear
display of Childree’s rampant penchant for full frontal nudity, penises and shit references.
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Clifton Childree, Choo-Choo Train Tootsie Roll , 2008. A twisted version of Disney's It's A Small World, viewers riding a pile of mock,
plaster-and-expanding-foam feces. Image courtesy of Locust Projects.
The performance was officially scheduled twice at 8PM and 10PM but due to its popularity Childree was forced to
double his output, arranging extra viewings at 9PM and 10:30PM to accommodate the voluminous crowds.
With so many venues firing on all cylinders there was certainly a lot to digest. There were many great
‘conventional’ exhibitions that we will no doubt cover in due course, however, those that stood out as being least
normal yet most successful were the ones in which the artists reached out to their audiences. Whether it was the
personal touch, the luxury to be able to be drawn into the artist’s world as a silent observer or just the pleasure of
seeing someone put themselves on a plate, these shows prevailed in respect of engendering a sense of shared
experience. It was nice, for want of a better word, to be entertained. Not that criticality should be shunned, or that
these exhibitions lacked exclusivity, or that not enough effort was required to understand them, or that exclusivity
and a prerequisite of effort is admirable, but the experience of being amongst friends whilst enjoying engaging,
amusing and provocative shows was great! I don’t know if that’s an art-thing, but it certainly should be.
After such an explosive season opener institutions will have to work pretty hard to keep up their game in the run up
to Basel, but I guess that’s mostly down to the caliber of their artists. Thanks to the efforts of Nessi and Childree,
their respective institution’s have high bench marks and the momentum to carry them forward [.]
--Thomas Hollingworth
.
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For more information about Federico Nessi please visit: www.spinellogallery.com
For more information about Clifton Childree please visit: www.locustprojects.org
.
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Break-in at Sweat Records
Monday, September 15, 2008
http://www.artlurker.com/2008/09/break-in-at-sweat-records/
For those of you who live outside of Miami and/or haven’t already heard, Sweat Records, arguably Miami's best
independent indie music store, was broken into and unsurreptitiously vandalized yesterday.
The bastards who breached the alternative Miami hang-out stole computers, music equipment and artwork
amounting to over 15,000 dollars. Food, magazines and music stocks were thankfully largely untouched, however
the famous aquarium by local ecological creatives Coralmorpholoic was tragically destroyed- pushed over it
crashed to the floor. The guys at Coralmorphologic are currently working around the clock to salvage as much life
as possible but it is a difficult task owing to the fragility of the specimens.
This sad news also comes on a day in which Wall Street suffered a crash of its own; losing of two of its longest
standing financial institutions: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. -- truly a regrettable day.
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It is not yet known who is responsible for the crime but whomever it was had an eye for contemporary art as works
by Miami artists Federico Nessi and David LeBatard (aka LEBO), and NY photographer Tom LeGoff were taken.
To our knowledge there isn’t much demand on the black market for emerging contemporary artists, however, the
works are presumably stowed in a garage somewhere awaiting the next chapter in their recent and unfortunate
fates.
Owners Lauren Reskin (aka Lolo) and Jason Jimenez are working hard to get the hallowed venue up and running
as soon as possible.
“ We’re just trying not to think about it too much at the moment” said Lauren. “It has been a heartbreaking 24
hours for us over here but if you know one thing about Sweat Records, it's that we don't give up. Hurricanes can't
keep us down, so we'll get through this too.”
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An e-mail blast will go out later today announcing temporary closure and sporadic hours. For anyone visiting Miami
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over the next few weeks that doesn’t get a chance to see the famous hot spot in its former glory please visit:
http://sweatrecordsmiami.blogspot.com/
Since Sweat Records are currently projector-less, this week's Music Movie Monday is postponed; however,
Tuesday night's show will go on! With a borrowed mic and amp their brand-new comedy night - CASA DE HA-HA will debut as planned with a great variety of local and professional comedians lined up. And happily the thieves left
the espresso machine and the microwave so drinks, popcorn and treats will be available.
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The offers of donations and time have already been overwhelming however, every little helps. If you feel moved to
contribute toward the recovery (and future improvement of their security system, among other things) they have a
paypal account under this address - [email protected] and there’s also a button for donations on their
myspace page and website.
.
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KMAN by David Rohn
Friday, September 12, 2008
http://www.artlurker.com/2008/09/kman-by-david-rohn/
La Isla Del Arte. KMAN's profile image on www.artkman.blogspot.com
Here follows a tribute of sorts by Miami based artist David Rohn to KMAN, a Miami based artist who died this
summer. Expanding on the exceptional and timely piece by Victor Barrenechea of the Biscayne Times, Rohn draws
focus on social elements within the tragedy that beset all artists; questioning the value of recognition when a
system exists solely to benefit the group.
---------------
KMAN, Art Kendallman, Art Man from Kendall, Jorge Bartlett, born 1957, died over the
summer …they found his body in the park. He’d been missing for several days. They
said it was a suicide.
In fact he left a note on his computer ‘el fin’ (‘the end’).
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A long time member of our art community… well not like Hernan or Daniel exactly….. I
mean not BIG…
…but a lot of people knew exactly who he was, what washis art.
And even what he struggled with.
Jorge Bartlett aka KMAN
KMAN evolved into a performance artist with his wife, Ana Pulido-Bartlett back in the
early ‘80’s .
Ana said that when she first met Jorge that she found him disturbing; later deciding that
his commitment to speaking out on war, violence, and waste was strikingly powerful and
sincere.
They performed together until they began having kids- then Ana started to put more
energy into the kids.
She says it happened kind of by itself; evolving from a visual artist to a (visceral)
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performance artist ; that back then “people in Miami didn't understand what they were
doing. They were kind of scared of it”
And there were a number of inevitable run-ins with the police,
Ana says that was to be expected; that you had to take that into account if you were
going to practice your art on the street.
Apparently he even got arrested for wearing a mask. It seems there's a law
against covering your face in public here; so he got arrested for that...
Now that we, the survivors, get it – like how to network: you know, be nice, don’t say
anything too intense, and act ‘as if your stock is going up’ (like if you were working your
way up a ladder).
Or if you just got out of art school in the recent past where they already started to teach
how to be a self promoting artist in the contemporary art industry: (Not like Brito he’s
‘too commercial’ more like Damien Hirst – now there’s a role model for young artists!
– or as it was described recently in a blurb about being an ‘insider’ at Art Basel Miami
Beach: “Don t find yourself on the WRONG SIDE of the velvet rope.”
Well after all nobody ever really goes anywhere all by themselves, we go someplace in
the context of a community. But KMAN was probably just too close to his own edge to
make a game of it. And once he was on the other side, he found he couldn’t make it
back.
They used to say (back in the ‘80’s when PR was beginning to eclipse art) that it
wasn’t “WHAT you knew, but WHO you knew” that got you somewhere (somewhere in
the pecking order of the contemporary art hierarchy that is).
But KMAN’s cut-off career makes you wonder if the guy could network at all – even in
Miami!
One of the images Ana sent was a poster for a dance-type related piece to be
performed by KMAN at a club called The Pawnshop. Turns out he set the whole thing up
and promoted it without even telling the club about it. (Presumably because it wasn’t so
clear they would have been in favor of it; maybe also because he was attracted by the
‘intervention’ (Guerrilla) idea of performance.
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Poster advertising unofficial appearance by KMAN at Pawnshop, Miami
In one case documented on a website, Jorge staged a performance intervention in a
Miami Avenue warehouse gallery. After the gallery owner had him escorted out by off
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duty police, most of the other artists – Including Ana – literally took their art off of the
walls and left the gallery, which subsequently closed.
But times had changed and New York artists were figuring out ways to ‘summer in the
Hamptons’ to be nearer the rich and influential.
Leonard Tachmes, who showed KMAN at Scope (where he installed himself in front of
the booth with the soldiers and airplanes of his art) said that he was “uncompromising”.
Charo Oquet who took his work to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic with ‘Edge
Zones’ says she had great respect for him, but that he could be difficult.
Gustavo Matamoros, who collaborated with him, said that: “He was his art” and that he
“came on strong,” and that “his strategy seemed to be to promote peace by mocking
violence.”
And Brook Dorsch, whose Wynwood Gallery was a place where KMAN felt comfortable
enough to simply show up and be who he was said: “He gradually became his
performance; there was eventually no distinction between his performance and his
presence.”
Jean-Paul Sartre states in his search for the reasons for writing that: “Art can be the
escape mechanism or the means to master something. One cannot escape alienation whatever the reason; moving into death and moving towards madness, it is still possible
to collect the weapons and (…sharpen their shining points) to overpower the enemy.”
This impassionate alienated ‘artiste maudit’ as the French would say: (‘doomed artist’
perhaps for us), seems like an anachronism nowadays when successful artists look like
strange hybrid social butterflies with a more-or-less-deep message.
Ana mentions that back then they were “thirsty for something like Basel” (Art Basel
Miami Beach) that they were “in the boondocks.” But that Jorge prevailed, making a
portable street-scape gallery that he would set up in the street in front of other galleries.
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KMAN's portable gallery temporarily situated in Miami's Wynwood Arts District
KMAN’s work involved the jargon and strategy of military and aviation: Invasions of
Puerto Rico; flight paths to Cuba; imaginary trips to Japan, often deeply detailed with
invented flight logs and itineraries. He wore hand-painted flight jumpsuits with helmets
and goggles, and carried toy planes, soldiers and ships, etc.
People said that if you encountered him he would monologue about all these things until
you either stopped him or walked away.
There was also visual material: often explosive images of conflict with staccato radial
lines or garishly colored images of planes. Photos of the artist in his outfits alongside
these images add up to something very definite, maybe even a little dismaying like a
kids TV show gone nuts.
More recently he developed complex websites with truncated images and sound that
are rather disturbing, along with documentation of past work.
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His wife explains that he became absorbed in tracking hits on his sites and became
more and more depressed that he didn’t get many, and eventually any. His journal
entries document the small and diminishing number of visits to his sites and of hits
leading up to his decision to end his life.
It would be great to be able to say, ‘that Jorge, KMAN, what a character. He certainly
adds a lot of color to the local scene.’ But his suicide and also an attempt he made 5
years ago add a solemn weight.
In an art scene that sometimes looks like a cross between a popularity contest and a
commodities market, a figure like KMAN is a distinct reminder that art, more than just Big
Business (at the moment) can also be Serious Business. In this case, the business of
self expression and social commentary.
Oscar Wilde pointed out that: “If you criticize Society, then you were certainly not a part
of it.” And in more recent times, Paris Hilton indicated that the opinion of her publicist
was much more important to her that that of her attorney-- and that was regarding a
legal matter!
In the context of the way we are now, KMAN might as well have called himself
Kave-MAN. His wife says he was willing to risk it all… I guess she knew him pretty well.
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KMAN out and about during one of the Wynwood Arts District's Second Saturday Art Walks
In the end it cost him more than a lot of pain and separation, and not least from an art
world that could barely even deal with him. ‘Til he could no longer prevail.’
Perhaps we should be grateful that alienation and despair, madness and death aren’t
the only subject and purpose of art.
But some of the most significant art that’s ever been made has come from this. So
KMAN’s experience can’t just be written off as an anachronistic and romantic idea
about art and artists.
These days artists not only have to figure out how to do their work but also how present
it both literally and figuratively to the public.
We live in an age of massive media manipulation. And although people always appear
to be growing more ‘media savvy’, it’s the media’s job to ensure it always stays at
least one step ahead.
For Artists this is more complex. We cannot ignore media as a means to present our
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work; but honesty and integrity is a great part of what gives good art its power. And how
we do this; how we present ourselves publicly becomes an inseparable part of the art.
So a super insider with a lot of success may find his or her work discussed in terms of
its cost, or where they’re showing, or how much its gone up (topics of interest to
collectors and money people but not really art related).
Conversely, people who don’t attract attention at all will simply be ignored (presumably
a worse fate than becoming a commodity).
I mean how else can you compare KMAN counting hits on his website alongside
Damien Hirst who has to keep track of buying back his own work at auction to prop up
his prices?
KMAN’s case is a reminder that to participate as an artist is of fundamental importance
to most artists and that creating ‘performance’ is an immediate, albeit a rather risky,
way to achieve this.
And that if an artist is really is invested then there’s a lot more than money or fame at
stake.
And with so many artists, so much chatter, and SO MUCH MONEY out there now,
artists have to look at their motives and at their message to understand how to fit into
this mix if they wish to prevail to really be and to remain artists.
Most collectors didn’t know about KMAN (oh well…), but for artists KMAN’s passing is a
reminder that the realm of self expression, of social commentary and spiritual progress
isn’t the same as having a career in an industry created by people who would like to
tame art, to own it and control it’s means of production.
Artists above all others, must not forget that art isn’t a product like others (The diamond
skull notwithstanding a 12” x 12” Vermeer painting’s value, transcends what it is made
of and puts paid to a diamond encrusted skull in any auction). And if we ever got the
feeling that we’d thrown the (art) baby out with the bath then it could only be the artists
and perhaps most especially those like Jorge Bartlett (aka KMAN) who could ever get it
back [.]
.
--David Rohn.
.
Please take time to enjoy the links complied below:
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Video tribute to KMAN of KMAN's memorial ceremony
Photo tribute to KMAN of KMAN's memorial ceremony
Photo tribute to KMAN of KMAN's memorial ceremony
KMAN's myartspace account
KMAN's Mobile Photobucket
One of KMAN's many Blogspots
Another of KMAN's many Blogspots
KMAN website (Third party)
YouTube video of KMAN performance
.
This text was contributed to ARTLURKER by David Rohn.
For more information please visit our Guest Writers Page
.
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Gordon Dring, The Godfather of Gladstone Street
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
http://www.artlurker.com/2008/09/gordon-dring-the-godfather-of-gladstone-street/
Untitled, 2003. Emulsion paint, colored crayon, charcoal, collage and aerosol on board.
At nearly 75 years of age and working in almost complete isolation in what is essentially a cultural vacuum, Gordon Dring (aka
Tagman D) is a pretty unique English painter. At first glace his work appears to be an inelegant amalgam of Jean-Michel
Basquiat and Antoni Tapies, and maybe that’s not far from the truth – there certainly isn’t a great deal of originality in his
oeuvre but it is interesting. Easily divided in to ‘periods’ or ‘bodies’ of work his biographical, primitive stylings have chartered
and expanded upon everything from his natural inclination towards feral states to his rediscovery of drugs at age 67.
An ex-miner, ex-soldier and ex-husband, Gordon Dring has had a string of jobs as long as your arm and outlived the majority of
his friends—the few that survive never see him as he already decided years ago that they were all boring old farts that best be
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done with. Seemingly oblivious of his own predicament he battles on despite failing health and increasingly limited mobility.
Thought of by many in his terraced, recession-riddled ex-mining community to be somewhat of a dangerous character he is
treated with respect and a certain curiosity from a safe distance. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to Robert Newton
as Captain Long John Silver in The Adventures of Long John Silver (26 episodes 1955-59), Dring has a crooked but worldly way
about him and was at one time or another apparently somewhat of a hit with the ladies! These days he keeps a dog, a lilac ford
focus, eats mostly microwaved food and sleeps only a few hours each night in a chair in his kitchen.
.
Gordon, what the fuck?
What the fuck, yeah! It’s more or less true, some days I sleep along time and some days I sleep not at all. When I am painting I
tend to sleep hardly at all, get up at 3 in the morning, go to bed whenever.
What first drove you to make work?
Booze, mainly. I mean I first started with photos, like, doing a night class when I were about 60. Then I bought myself one of
them there how to draw and paint books, the one I had was actually just drawing. Soon after mucking about with that for a bit I
enrolled on an art ‘A’ level at West Notts College of Art. I did that for a year then the teacher, I forget his name right now... was
it Trevor Beven? Yes! No it wasn’t! No, it was whats-his-name? He was a mustachioed guy. You know the village people? He
were like one of them village people, you know the copper? Anyway he took early retirement or redundancy or got fired or
something but before he went he told me he fair liked me work and said “If I was you I should skip the final year of your A level
course and put in for foundation course.” At that time I were doing still lifes – one of them I was quite proud of . I’d done it in the
old fashioned way like that painter from Amsterdam, all light and dark with goblets and ducks heads and lobsters and that sort of
thing. You know his name and so do I, normally. It’s not important but you can just say El Greco if you have to! Well anyway,
I’ve lost it somewhere now. So I took my work over there to the Foundation tutors and that’s when I first met Julian Bray. He
really liked me work, the colors I think or summut, anyway, after that I were on the foundation. That’s when I really got into it,
like.
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Spoon Me, 2000. Emulsion and acrylic paint, oil pastel and charcoal on board.
What stops you making work?
I stopped just recently cause I can’t take drugs or drink anymore because of my health. Before I got into modernism I was just
interested in the art itself and that type of thing but now it’s more of the whole process. Often times I stop because I think
something’s not worth while or it doesn’t look right. I mean, you see if I can make you understand this, when I am having my
nights when I am asleep, like in the middle of the night, and I just wake up and think “I’ve got to start painting” I am really fired
like, I am on fire; I am driven, for want of a better word, but all of a sudden it’ll just go. Sometimes it gets to the point when I am
just dabbing on the painting and I don’t really like the work what I finish up doin. All the big ones like Requiem and the others
from 2003 – 2004 I think they was a big breaking point you know, after that series I just lost interest for a long while. It just left
me. And don’t ask me how and why cause I don’t know, you know? Its just one of them things – as quickly as it comes it goes.
That time in particular when I stopped I had lasted good for about 6 or 7 years before that you know. I think the main thing is
that I get fired up by drinking plenty of wine, like, and vodka and so it used to open me mind. I suppose a lot of painters have
done that in the past.
Who has been a big influence?
Turner and Van Gough; and Basquiat influenced me but that was at a later point.
What is it about those artists that you like?
I just like the colors, I think they’re beautiful.
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10 Stamp Tom, 2001. Acrylic paint and oil pastel on board.
Do you find the area you live in to be of particular importance?
I think when I start drawing again or painting that it’ll be pit scenes, collieries and things like that. A long way away from what I
have been doing.
So a regression to a more spiritual or nostalgic type of subject?
Yeah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. A lot more spiritual. At the moment I am not really drawn to it but if it comes I
think that type of thing is what I’d be interested in looking at. I’m 74 now don’t forget.
I read somewhere that you have never been to New York. I am interested, from the perspective of an older gentleman with art
pretentions, what do you imagine it to be like?
Very noisy and busy and fast. Makes you tired just thinking about it. A lot like London but more so.
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Untitled, 2002. Acrylic paint, colored crayon, charcoal and oil pastel on board.
What annoys you about art?
Well I suppose this ere what-do-you-call-it? The pile of bricks and that type of thing, the unmade bed, its... I don’t know; if you
can call that art then anything can be art.
Yes. And what is it specifically about it that annoys you?
Because I don’t think it requires skill. The skill has gone out of modern, well, not modern art because that comes right up into
the 60’s but what’s the name for it, it begins with C.
Conceptual, contemporary?
Aye, that’s it, that’s the word. No, I’ve got no time for it actually. I mean, I think painting is where its at and I think painting will
make a comeback at some point, at some date. It takes a certain degree of skill and imagination. And I know how the argument
goes, the conceptualists can say: “Well, to do conceptual art it takes imagination” and I know it’s about ideas and that it takes
skill to be able to make those ideas relevant and understood so art can move forward but I say: “Who wants to move forward as
long as it’s artistic?” I mean if you can admire something then that’s interesting isn't it? I mean everyone says you have to take
it forward or say something both specific and general but you can get distracted by all that. Why can’t you just enjoy something
for what it is? Why do you have to enjoy it on all these different levels? There are some good Scottish painters in this country
you know, in Scotland, especially in Scottish schools, and I dare say they’re pushing it forward because they’re very dramatic. I
mean the conversation isn’t always moving forward, it’s multi-faceted - sometimes it labors over something, going in circles. Art
doesn’t talk about one thing that you can take away with you and use up; it’s always there and it’s always eternally young and
new even if it’s really old. I know what they say, that it’s all a progression, and that’s true in terms of documents and learning
and movements in human history, but it’s cyclic too! All these ignored artists who make yesterdays type of art – its sad because
I’m sure they’ve got something to say.
Who annoys you in art?
Well, Tracy Emin for a start. I think students can do better things than her. In fact a lot of painters I think did their best work
when they were students. You know because they had got no inhibitions or anything like that and I think as you get on in art you
start having inhibitions about things.
How would you like to be remembered?
I don’t give a fuck to tell you truth. I did my paintings and I enjoyed them. I’ve heard some stuff about being famous and all that
but things what I enjoy are me friends, and people such as Julian Bray and Dan Jones who have admired my art so… that’s
enough for me.
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REQUIEM, 2001. Emulsion and acrylic paint, charcoal and oil pastel on board.
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And finally, can you describe the pleasure that you get from making work?
The nearest thing I think I can tell you is that it’s like an orgasm; not literally an orgasm, but better, although I haven’t had one
in a while! Like this one time down in London when my friend had only been living down there a few week and this black guy got
stabbed in the back outside his house. That jumped into my mind and I painted that within two days, I think Julian’s got that
now. And with my wife, there’s this one with this alligator whispering in my ear, did I tell you she were schizophrenic? Anyway
and that’s her; mad as a fucking hatter. And such is my life, very tumultuous. I’ve lived with pain for thirty-odd year and art was
simply the best way I found to explain it to myself. Yes, definitely a release [.]
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Untitled, 2001. Acrylic paint and oil pastel on board.
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His paintings have a certain naive quality to them but that’s intentional. Not wanting to blinker himself with his own progression
or learning Dring opted instead to regress from Van Dijck style still lives to drug and alcohol fueled daubs that answered to no
school of thought or painting. His message is raw. Being raw of course means that it is also unrefined and as such unavoidably
biased, short sighted and while is it perhaps not ignorant, it is definitely dismissive of a lot of values that the contemporary art
world celebrates.
Dring garners little attention for his art and no future openings are planned. The few exhibitions that he has participated in have
been small group shows in the UK’s Midlands and no work has ever sold. Despite the somewhat obvious, somewhat shameful
appropriations of his aesthetic influences he stands out to me not only because he is a very old guy with no art background who
makes work, but also because you honestly get the sense that what he is doing is totally genuine. There is a present human
quality to his work. Somehow, despite its jarring appearance its good just to be near it – you can feel the decisions, see the
processes.
Gordon Dring at his home studio, 2008
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For the most part his home county of Nottinghamshire is not an ideal place to be a contemporary artist. There are few significant
institutions and the majority of people living there harbor moldering preconceptions about art and as such are often scared or
offended by his work. It is all the more honorable then, that Dring, pitted as he is against a barrage of negative criticism
regarding his art, is invested 100% in it. And although we are sure he doesn’t quite appreciate what ‘it’ is or could have the
potential to be, it sustains him in his twilight years – and for each extra day that he lives we are evermore thankful [.]
.
For more information please send us an e-mail through our Contact Page.
_______________________________________________
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Throbbing Gristle by Federico Nessi

Transcription

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