Queer Theory after Duchamp. Spike Arts Quarterly.

Photo: Paula Court
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FOCUS by Michael Kirby
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Michael Kirby is a writer based in New York.
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi Berlin
Felix Bernstein
“Bieber Bathos Elegy”
Whitney Museum, New York
15. – 16.1.2016
As Thierry de Duve suggests in Kant after Duchamp, the categorical judgment
“this is beautiful” was replaced in the
20th century by Duchamp’s “this is
art,” which, in turn, was replaced by
Broodthaers’s “this is not art.” In this
new millennium, we might add a new
and improved aesthetic judgment to
the list: “this is queer.” The end result
of a trajectory where Duchamp and
Broodthaers became the expected, repeated until they were ironized and lobotomized to death, which brings us to
the present, where everyone wants
something that can bring identity politics and affect to their conceptual work,
thereby bringing the avant-garde to life
in a new and improved fashion.
Slipping between YouTube, critical
writing, poetry, and theatrical performance, Felix Bernstein (*1992) finds a
loophole in the present, giving us what
we ask for (the objet d’art as queerness)
while at the same time frustrating our
aesthetic demands. There is always a
way to circumvent the demands of the
present. When Duchamp submitted his
urinal to the collection of objets d’art
sought by the Society of Independent
Artists in 1917, it was not a “subversive”
move, but rather the discovery of a
loophole in the rules that allowed for
more aesthetic pleasure than the expectable.
Which brings us to Bieber Bathos Eleg y
(2016), Bernstein’s recent Whitney performance, where the artist’s queer expressivity and Jewish criticality were
given and negated at once – satirizing
and exceeding the expectations of camp
and kitsch. On view was what Wayne
Koestenbaum calls Bernstein’s “hyper-professionally embodied disembodiment”. Fittingly, the performance
was based on a chapter in his melancholic, fragmentary, and diaristic poetry collection Burn Book, which blends a
tribute to Justin Bieber with odes to
both his deceased sister and the child
star Eva Ionesco.
In Act I, Bernstein played a leatherfaced predator looking through videos
of Bieber, Bieber fans, and his own
home movies. In Act II, a queer children’s chorus dressed in clothes by
fashion brand Whatever 21 (a spoof on
the commercial fashion brand Forever
21) was led in an improvised deconstruction of the song Tomorrow from the
Broadway musical Annie by vocalist
Shelley Hirsch. And in Act III, Bernstein performed a duet with a projected
angel Bieber with live violin and cello
accompaniment.
In various ways, Bernstein hyperbolically and diabolically incorporated a
mocking self-reflexivity about what
agendas and fantasies the show served.
In Act II a sinister, green-lit curator (of
the self-proclaimed Queer Art Guardianship) announced that:
The show will proceed with the following parameters: Intergenerational meditations on intergenerationality. Avant
vocalist and composer Shelley Hirsch
leads a workshop for emerging postNeo Queer avant-garde Whitney teen
youth dressed in fashion brand Whatever 21. Downtown meets TMZ moments rich in charitable events of sad
inclusivity and inclusive sadness, of
cruel optimism and optimistic cruelty,
all symbolizing Felix’s queer nostalgia
for a futurity beyond this: a 23-yearold’s mid-career attempt at sustainability in an art … market … predicated …
on built-in obsolescence. Through this
endorsement the artisanship of failure
shall be contractually mandated pending further perfection.
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And in the final act, Bieber critiqued
the show and its context in song:
And I’m like
your desire
is banal
you’re a douche
you’re just one more
hysteric faggot
just like all the
rest
there is no subversion
left
you transgress
and transgress
but there is no subversion
left
you fag,
queer devotion
is dull
all perversion is performance
all performance is banal
Bernstein’s performance style was derived from tragicomic humor rather
than moralistic, sentimental, expressive
revelations of identity, confession,
transgression, politics, or brand. He was
not simply trying to arouse, freak out,
seduce, embarrass, or receive attention
from the straight man in the room. Nor
was he claiming to be some sort of autonomous diva, “doing his own thing”
without giving a shit about what the
straight man thinks. Neither traditional
faggot-Oedipal drama was played out.
Instead, he produced a form that was at
once exhibitory and insular, without
succumbing to either desperate abjection or sex-positive transcendence. He
threw both types into a blender and returned them to us in a fashion that was
upside-down, crazed, and horrific.
Watching the show, where a masked
Felix scrolls through videos and noisily
then operatically then noisily sings
Adele, all while on a tiny Pee-wee’s Playhouse set, one wanted to say this is punk
or queer or camp or experimental, but
the nervous shivers it elicited were from
a surprise that never solidified into any
preconceived genre take on cruel or
queer art.
What was at play was, then, the dialectical disruption of expectation: so where
you expected Pee-wee Herman you
were given comedian Andrew Dice
Clay, where you expected musician
Antony Hegarty you were given punk
singer GG Allin, where you expected
performer Sharon Needles you were
given Vito Acconci, and where you expected a post-Internet New York
School poet you were given Adorno.
But then as soon as you expected cruel
masculinism, you were given a feminist, heartfelt, feminine dweeb.
Which turned Felix’s performance into
a negative-dialectical horror show,
based on the crucial rule that John
Carpenter set up in the 1978 slasher
film Halloween: The safest house inspires the most fear. Horror always
comes too soon, and right when we feel
safe, Michael Myers, the deadpan
psycho-killer, comes back to life.
Don’t get me wrong, Bernstein is able
to do the campy drag and the gothic
punk and the ironic institutional critique, but he chose to push beyond
them. The job got done, but only in the
midst of an escape act. There was no
time to pause for affirmation (whether
it is was affirmation of negativity or affirmation of positivity).
Sifting through his anal-retentive collection of hoarded tastes, he chose not
to “sublimate” through social expression and coterie politics, but rather to
explode them through a voyeuristic
self-pleasuring performed in front of a
scared and yet sympathetic audience.
And in this way the Duchampian slapin-the-face returned. Bernstein was
asked to bring his gay male criticality to
the museum, as a kind of excess. He delivered, but then brought too much of
the too much. This has become his aesthetic marker and, at least for now, bred
a discomfort that is exactly what I, or
we, (don’t want to) want.
Photos: Ariele Max
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