and he that toucheth the flesh of the unclean becomes unclean.

[intertribal]

Re: The recent controversy over the Smithsonian Institute's installation "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." 

I actually really, really like the "video in question:" "Fire In My Belly," created by David Wojnarowicz in 1987.  Brutal and sad and frightening for sure (it almost reminds me of Begotten, but better).  But powerful, I think, and evocative.  You can hardly accuse it of having nothing to say or being "merely competent."  And look, people: I have mummy-phobia, and I have it pretty bad.  I don't find it pleasant either.  But judging by the way people were talking about it, and the way it was described in news articles, you would have thought it was a 4-minute video of ants crawling on a crucifix (or as the Washington Post puts it "Ant-covered Jesus video").  That segment is 11 seconds.  11 seconds!  And not even a memorable part.  That's like calling Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing a "book about abandoning dogs."

But, the video was removed after people like the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (hahaha), House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Republican Whip Eric Cantor complained about it.  Catholic League guy is just grossed out: "The material is vile... This is hate speech... It is designed to insult (Christians)."  Eric Cantor is pitching to the Putting the Christ Back in Xmas demographic: "an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season."  Just want to remind: 11 seconds.  Also, not everything is about you.  Boehner threatened the Smithsonian with... something, when the Republicans take control of the House in January, if they didn't fix the problem.  But another Republican, Jack Kingston, wants to launch a Congressional investigation, because he is very angry about tax dollars - no, no, public space - being used to fund this "really perverted sick stuff" (he also thinks "Male nudity, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her own breast" are sick and perverted and kinky and questionable; presumably female nudity can still qualify as art): "They claim that this is not paid for by tax dollars, yet this is a public building with a publicly paid staff, public heat and air-conditioning, if you will, public security. So there’s no question the taxpayers are subsidizing this."

Contrast this with this snippet from the Publishers Weekly review of a book about Wojnarowicz, David Wojnarowicz: A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side: "informed by his outrage against America's treatment of outsiders, in particular those suffering with AIDS." 

So on the one hand, video informed by outrage against America's treatment of outsiders.  American politician condemns video as, essentially, not representative enough of the public experience to justify public dollars being spent on it.  Yes, you ARE an outsider, says Jack Kingston.  You are not one of the public.  Your pain and your experience are not ours.  Sit down and shut up. 

Which is fucking bullshit, in case I needed to add that.

See also, a great article by John Coulthart (he makes the same point I do - "Among other things Wojnarowicz’s film depicts the artist having his lips sewn together. By shutting out Wojnarowicz from their exhibition the gallery and the Smithsonian Institute re-affirm the point he was making in the 1980s about the voices of the afflicted being silenced" - and adds a ton more, including a bonus riff on The Passion of the Christ, re: who is "allowed" to depict violation of Christ's body): "Ecce homo redux."

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't have to know art--it is an automatic reaction to the composition. I don't know if it can be good or bad. I don't get your taste because I cannot see the story in your head; I am reacting to something else entirely.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well... okay. Somehow I thought you've had more experience thinking about art as art, image as image, because you have actually made visual art and thought about photography. But yes to your last sentence. Maybe that's why no one sees what I see in the world :P Really though.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I have had a little, but it was practically redundant, because they were just things I sort of automatically 'got'. I mean, the artists didn't just make them up out of thin air. They already existed--in nature, in culture, wherever. Things like symmetry are everywhere.

And probably, yeah.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

('in culture' - some cultures seem to prefer certain ratios more than others, but there always seems to be some basic system you can get, or modulations of something familiar--it's a logic of patterns that doesn't require thought to find. And it unfolds into the subject of the image, giving it life)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

music is harder.

also, reiteration of what was said previously about the purely abstract elements being more universal but lacking emotional resonance without the culturally/historically/etc. particular aspects

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Uh, sorry for going on a tangent. Point is, culturally bound or universal, I already knew them regardless.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

So, do I also know them and ignore them/focus on other things (like the invisible story in my head), or was I dropped on the head as a child (actually happened)? Probably I just focus on other things.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Some people are probably just more sensitive them than others. Matter of character, I suppose.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Character? Moral character?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Also, the training is more to think about composition when you make art than when you view it...can help people with both (though some just don't get it), but learning to do it has more complications than just appreciating it. Same's probably true of writing.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would agree (for writing).

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

And probably, yeah.

This is actually somewhat disturbing/eye-opening to me. I mean, I wonder now how much I do that with everything. For sure I do that with polisci. No wonder my brain always feels like it's on hyper-drive, and why I particularly value "empathy" or even have a weakness for "cultural relativism." Good Lord (to myself).