Looking for additional conversation on Rashaad Newsome’s The Conductor (Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi) (2008), on view at PS1 Greater New York? The blog produced two of its most productive comment threads on the subject a couple months ago, before Catalogue Editorial Assistant Rachel Wetzler threw this Newsome interview into the mix. Newsome discusses most of the themes covered in the comment section–that the Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi score used in action movies connects hip hop stars overcoming adversity with the similar narrative of action heroes. He also adds that the piece is made up of the most popular songs in the New York area from 2008 according to radio stations Hot 97 and 105.1. I like the layer of geographic and time specificity because it suggests a piece that at least in theory could constantly be changing. This seems a more accurate reflection of the web and speaks to the youtube medium Newsome uses. I’m not sure it solves the issues brought up by others — that the source videos themselves are already a more powerful statements on themes such as overcoming adversity — but I think the video is worth noting.
Meanwhile, The Problem With Academic Language sparked a great debate, in part due to my own misreading of the text on Abramović. Blogger Sally McKay points out that the crux of Tremblings post, is that the re-enactment of Seven Easy Pieces is the memory (as opposed to my recasting, which posited it was shaped by it). Time Out New York’s Howard Halle provides the most substantive response to that theory:
If Abramović knew in doing “Seven Easy Pieces “that her cobbled-together, rigorously documented reenactments would necessarily (and problematically) supplant the original performances,” then why do it? Why not leave those works in the realm of fragmentary evidence and memory where they were clearly consigned by the intent of their creators? Why is there a need for an answer to “the critical problem of performance art, however imperfect,” or even, for that matter, the necessity of raising a question in the first place? My problem with Abramović is that her motivations are more self-aggrandizing than critical. That she colluded with an institution to package herself as a star—successfully I might I add—precisely through re-enactments of her own and other works that were devised to be anti-institutional. Well, you might say, that was then, and this is now, but if you ask me, it's rather like silkscreening Malevich on a T-shirt. It belongs in the gift shop, not in the museum proper, though of course, I completely understand that these days, there's very little difference between the two.
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One thing you and Mckay agree on re the Tremblings article is that that the strange and pointless use of ‘metonym’ had to go.
One thing you and Mckay agree on re the Tremblings article is that that the strange and pointless use of ‘metonym’ had to go.
It is performance art using indirect self-reference (x(y)=(y)(y) hence metonym) to assert a Greenbergian idea of purity of medium (body+time+space). It requires a suspension of disbelief, like theatre, that she isn’t interested in supplanting the author from the aura of the works… I’m not saying this was her intention, but an inevitable outcome. Though as Halle, says, what is the point? Operating in a medium that is not easily documented, isn’t anymore a “problem” than paint being liquid is a problem. What is odd to me is the supported assertion that the work “needs” to be better documented. It’s not like they are using smellovision to recapture the events so that you could smell the honey in “How To Explain Pictures…” Why not just say that the point was to nod to those performances, and re-present and recontextualize them in the present? Just asking!
It is performance art using indirect self-reference (x(y)=(y)(y) hence metonym) to assert a Greenbergian idea of purity of medium (body+time+space). It requires a suspension of disbelief, like theatre, that she isn’t interested in supplanting the author from the aura of the works… I’m not saying this was her intention, but an inevitable outcome. Though as Halle, says, what is the point? Operating in a medium that is not easily documented, isn’t anymore a “problem” than paint being liquid is a problem. What is odd to me is the supported assertion that the work “needs” to be better documented. It’s not like they are using smellovision to recapture the events so that you could smell the honey in “How To Explain Pictures…” Why not just say that the point was to nod to those performances, and re-present and recontextualize them in the present? Just asking!
Who is Halley quoting in his response? Or, as Halley claims was the “intent” of the performers that Abramović was quoting, is it better that we leave that too “in the realm of fragmentary evidence and memory,” even though this might completely shift the context (and implied authorship) of his quote?
Abramović might be paradoxically (and selfishly) institutionalizing/commodifying performance art, but I think that her formal acknowledgment of who she’s reperforming is — as Rrose asks — “to nod to those performances, and re-present and recontextualize them in the present.” Her reenactments are not “the memory,” they are reperformances — and accrediting them as such would plainly assert this distinction.
Jesse I was quoting you. also I spell my name without the “y.” You’re thinking of Edmund Halley; think Halle Berry.
My apologies! I’ll remember that it’s not “Halley†like comet or Peter, but like Berry. Howard Halle Berry (mnemonic device).
I can see why you dislike Abramović’s “self-aggrandizing†and her restaging of once “anti-institutional†performances within an institution, but the simple system of accreditation that Abramović has proposed for use in reperformances isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it’s like properly citing someone’s quotes, or spelling their name correctly – a formal nicety and referential aid). If an institution were to present, say, a naked, mud-smeared artist pulling and reading a scroll from their vagina, I don’t see why any placard or textual mention of the piece shouldn’t read: “Reperformance of ‘Interior Scroll,’ 1975, by Carolee Schneemann.†Like an author properly citing another author’s words, I just think that this would be good practice (especially for institutions). It would also provide a simple, helpful reference for those who might not be aware that what they’re seeing is, in fact, a reperformance of another artist’s work. It’s like how a playbill for any play mentions the play’s original playwright, or how the liner notes for a covered song mentions that song’s songwriter. Do I think that institutions should be beholden to these conventions? I’m not sure. Are they awful, purity-and-originality smashing conventions? I don’t think so.
And I’m also not sure that all of the artists whose work Abramović reperformed in “Seven Easy Pieces†would’ve been distressed by her reperforming them in an institution. Joseph Beuys was known for his radical-though-didactic (and “shamanisticâ€) performances within an institutional setting. Abramović’s reenactment of his “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare,†while in a dramatically different context, doesn’t run rampant over his “legacy†as much as it re-edifies Beuys and corporeally represents an echo of the work for reconsideration.
Who is Halley quoting in his response? Or, as Halley claims was the “intent” of the performers that Abramović was quoting, is it better that we leave that too “in the realm of fragmentary evidence and memory,” even though this might completely shift the context (and implied authorship) of his quote?
Abramović might be paradoxically (and selfishly) institutionalizing/commodifying performance art, but I think that her formal acknowledgment of who she’s reperforming is — as Rrose asks — “to nod to those performances, and re-present and recontextualize them in the present.” Her reenactments are not “the memory,” they are reperformances — and accrediting them as such would plainly assert this distinction.
Jesse I was quoting you. also I spell my name without the “y.” You’re thinking of Edmund Halley; think Halle Berry.
My apologies! I’ll remember that it’s not “Halley†like comet or Peter, but like Berry. Howard Halle Berry (mnemonic device).
I can see why you dislike Abramović’s “self-aggrandizing†and her restaging of once “anti-institutional†performances within an institution, but the simple system of accreditation that Abramović has proposed for use in reperformances isn’t necessarily a bad thing (it’s like properly citing someone’s quotes, or spelling their name correctly – a formal nicety and referential aid). If an institution were to present, say, a naked, mud-smeared artist pulling and reading a scroll from their vagina, I don’t see why any placard or textual mention of the piece shouldn’t read: “Reperformance of ‘Interior Scroll,’ 1975, by Carolee Schneemann.†Like an author properly citing another author’s words, I just think that this would be good practice (especially for institutions). It would also provide a simple, helpful reference for those who might not be aware that what they’re seeing is, in fact, a reperformance of another artist’s work. It’s like how a playbill for any play mentions the play’s original playwright, or how the liner notes for a covered song mentions that song’s songwriter. Do I think that institutions should be beholden to these conventions? I’m not sure. Are they awful, purity-and-originality smashing conventions? I don’t think so.
And I’m also not sure that all of the artists whose work Abramović reperformed in “Seven Easy Pieces†would’ve been distressed by her reperforming them in an institution. Joseph Beuys was known for his radical-though-didactic (and “shamanisticâ€) performances within an institutional setting. Abramović’s reenactment of his “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare,†while in a dramatically different context, doesn’t run rampant over his “legacy†as much as it re-edifies Beuys and corporeally represents an echo of the work for reconsideration.
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