Spectacles
Critical essay in response to the exhibition, by Hugh Dichmont & Aaron Juneau
Bound to the ephemeral, in an ever-changing state of flux and mobility,
ceaselessly experiential yet denying any directly effectual, participatory
action. What we perceive is irrefutably exciting yet remains nothing more
than something that we see, nothing above an experienced phenomenon, nothing
beyond a spectacle.
-
Of the few joys that had ever befallen Gordon Haddle’s stunted existence
not one had, as yet, outlived the mayfly. It is true that he did nothing
to prolong their condemned existence -loving something obsessively one
day, discarding it the next- and although they were short lived fascinations
it could not be said that they were forgotten easily. Inhabiting his fluttering
heartbeat as vividly and violently as an unrequited love, these passions
became destabilized by their own furious momentum, like a train too big
and fast for its tracks.
Gordon was not a collector, nor was he creative; his passing compulsions
(periodic and desperate) took flight internally as lucid dreams that were
chaotic and perverse. His most recent series of dreams took the form of
foxhunts –heroic mêlées in which Gordon was both fox and hunter, whose
fated strides would have him meet himself in a fit of blood and glory.
The abject terror of the fight propelled Gordon’s dowdy heart into a pulsing
beat that carried him through the week.
-
The transient nature of art today,
its tendency towards the temporary and expendable is, unsurprisingly, deeply
rooted in western modernity and contemporary art history. The provenance
of such ideas can be traced to conceptualism of the late 1950’s and particularly
to the coining of the term ‘Happenings’ by Allan Kaprow in 1959. Kaprow’s
Happenings took the form of orchestrated events in which the viewer was
physically implicated into the work. They were seen as a denouncement of
the notion of the artist as commanding genius and as an attempt to transfer
the position of artistic empowerment to that of the viewer or participant.
Taking similar ideas as its impetus, the Fluxus movement of the early 1960’s
delivered, to an increasingly sceptical audience, quirky, enigmatic performances
seeped in the absurd and arbitrary. What underpinned such movements, putting
aside the tenuous critique of capitalism to which Fluxus’ main man George
Maciuna’s professed to adhere, is an indispensable connection to play.
-
It
was real bloody late, a Friday I think but that doesn’t matter. I sat in
me favorite chair, reclined to the perfect angle. Not sure what exactly
that angle is neither, but it’s probably around the 45 degree mark. Thing
kinda finds itself there now anyway. There’s a click that hits the end
of your finger, kinda like crackin a knuckle or clicking your jaw. I guess
the old thing has become a part of my anatomy, just as much as any other
damn part now anyhow, so its fitting that it feels like a joint popping.
Anyways, so I’m just sitting there, just woke up from a real cracker, feeling
more tired than when I drifted off and just lighting my last cigarette
of my second pack of the day, when Martha storms in without so much as
a knock.
“Sat in that stinkin fuckin chair again Gordy?”
she yelled in her usual brash, indignant tone. “My god what a sorry sight
you are.”
“Yeh well, what of it? There’s more happenin in here than any of those
dumb shit-holes you hang out in.”
“Oh I’m sure there is Gord, like the pissin foxes of yours and those bleedin
magic specs!”
“I never said they were magic! Sorry if I don’t feel like I need a barrel
full of cheap wine to feel good.”
“Feel good! Oh sure, you feel good do you? That’s why you do nothing but
moan huh? And that’s why you feel the need to live like this. In your little
fuckin bubble! Yeh you feel good alright Gordon, as good as I do pissed-out-me-ed
at least.”
“It ain’t the gettin pissed that I object to Mar, it’s the cuttin corners.
There’s no easy route to progression and success you know. There’s rules
to comply to, there’s structures in place that you’ve got to adhere to
and there’s boundaries to cross. Walls to climb and stuff. Well… If you’re
searchin out there that is. Although I’d be reluctant to say that you were
searchin at all Mar. Ha, searchin in the trousers of all those scummy bloody
men maybe. Aye, or searchin at the bottom of a bottle of fuckin vino de
la crappo!”
“And what would you have me do Gordon? Sit on my ass all day and sleep?
No ta Dad. You can keep your crazy fantasies to yourself. I wanna play,
to have a bit of fun is what I want.”
“Aye, and you’ll have fun en-all Mar, but I’ve said it once and I’ll keep
sayin it. You’ll never be as free out there as you will in your own head.
There’s no substitute for your imagination my love and out there there’ll
always be some bastard controllin ya. Its what they call subjugation Martha.”
“Fuckin subja-what? Well whatever it is, it’ll do for me.”
And then she was gone.
-
Play should be considered
inseparable from artistic practice. In its broadest sense, it is synonymous
with both evolutionary and cultural advances and is firmly nestled in the
heart of the innovative and revelatory. For knowledge and discovery are
often founded on experimentation and chance, two notions that refuse to
be disassociated from plays ideological make-up. This placement must not
be deemed to disregard plays purely visceral, naturalistic qualities, as
it could never fully shake the inherent childlike implications that it
unavoidably connotes. Perhaps an image of a child maniacally jumping around
in a carefree manner, arms flailing, proudly grinning with milk white teeth,
could act as a fitting analogy for plays binary attributes of the whimsical
and the anarchic when placed in the context of art. Play is a point at
which these otherwise dysfunctional polarities can coalesce in the fertile
pools of the liberated imagination.
-
Down the cement stairwell she stared
at the doorman. Often short men, hairy and stocky, would turn up at Gordon’s
flat looking for her. They would bind her wrists. She obeyed. Gordon, often
sat in the adjacent room, heard in their voices the hollow jeers of conquest,
their disregard for Martha as urgent and violent as their own self-hate.
Desperate rhythms.
Gordon put the glasses on. At first nothing. Gripping the chair’s sagging
face he lifted himself to his feet. His march stammering beneath him, ankle-deep
in a tangled meadow of debris, Gordon traced the perimeter of the room,
arriving sluggishly at the kitchen, dull with the early evening’s half-light.
He sat. Through the wall the incessant thudding.
A break in the clouds let bright stems of light stream in through the window
blinds, marking abstract shapes on the kitchen floor. A cool autumn’s breeze
tickled Gordon’s skin; the blades of long-grass bickering energetically
amongst themselves. The glasses had produced scenes before but none so
vivid as now. Across the way was Martha, talking heatedly to her identical
twin in the water’s reflective sheen, punctuating her persistent banter
with over-arm lobs of rotten crab apples. From where he was sat Gordon
couldn’t discern the expression on her face.
Without much hope of reaching the door, Gordon made his way across the
room. Leaning against cupboards and appliances he staggered into the hallway,
towards her bedroom, adjusting the crooked stance of the glasses with his
arthritic right hand. The loud laughter and dull thumps had since become
enigmatic whispers, carefully muted. He prodded the door open. Four leaden-footed
men stood hunched above Martha; naked and grey, their anxious faces, her
lifeless body.
She was squinting up at the sun, the light warm on her skin, allowing brittle
smudges of colour to seep in through her eyelashes. As she wriggled sleepily
on the grass Gordon noticed threads of pubic hair poking out the side of
her shorts.
-
What is play but
distraction; Closing one’s eyes to imagine a sunny beach in the midst
of bitter winter? In A Very Easy Death Simone de Beauvoir’s dying mother,
whilst on eternity’s threshold, finds pleasure in the simple things;
crosswords, reading, polite conversation with visiting acquaintances.
With her gentile life as a happy, vivacious woman steadily receding into
the past-tense, these pastimes anchored her to normality, routine and a
time when she was ‘herself’. They are faith in action, and more than anything
else, acts of rebellion against fate.
When all hope of recuperation is lost Madame de Beauvoir abandons the frivolities
that had previously characterized her life. Having always lived turned
towards the outside world she suddenly became in-tune with her own head
for the first time. She abandoned the “ready-made phrases and the conventional
gestures (that) had masked her real feelings”, becoming honest about her
opinions in a way that unsettled those that knew her as a “retiring woman,
so rarely named.” In declining to play anymore she became herself.
And so to art. Gallery openings, littered with literati, critics, booze
and buzz, represent art world utopia; terribly self-conscious affairs in
which assuming definite roles becomes as integral to the event as the art
itself. From afar conversations can seem like one inane monologue after
another, full of awkward pauses and self indulgent anecdotes. Personalities
form categories, pieces of clothing; costumes. In a vaguely Shakespearean
sense the gallery becomes the stage on which each of us portrays a distorted
version of ourselves. But what if the opening event itself refuses to play
as expected? A scary thought springs to mind; the selves we hide may unexpectedly
surface, revealing our desperate truths.
