Not a review: Wheeler at Zwirner

The title states that this is not a review, in the sense that I try to communicate my personal experience of a gallery event in Chelsea rather than discussing the work which I will let speak for itself.

I have a problem with a panel with 3 white guys even if one has a charming Italian accent, I know I'm being dogmatic, but it does feel terribly déjà vu. I was incapable of listening to anything Germano Celant said, maybe it's his accent, and he is likely to have said some very interesting things, he is the guy who coined the term "Arte povera" and who heads the Prada Foundation in Milano - maybe he is better with the written word. He does have a most charming name too, a whole story could be imagined around that name!

Doug Wheeler was more arresting. He stuck me as being the interesting case of a man who was shy to start with in life. Had he chosen another path, he would have had to overcome it. But he has become a famous artist, and  this allows for every idiosyncrasy of the personality. The artist is sold "as is" :with the understanding he is not able, nor expected to conform, and his failings are his qualities as they are linked to his creativity.

Wheeler, 81, has a handsome mane of long white hair. Its always a fun exercise to imagine a man with his long hair trimmed short. And I thought, imagine, imagine this doctor's son had had a career in a corporation. Or had started his own business of medical supplies. He might have had to beat the shyness out of his system, as is expected of what one calls a real man, of a breadwinner. And I can see his face shorn of hair, he would have had to compact into something showing power and control his spread out sitting position that is a self conscious attempt at appearing relaxed, and why not, It is a very different person yet the divergence in these paths might have been caused by something seemingly benign, like a bit of bullying by a cousin or an over demanding father.

My impression is that Wheeler knows the show business. He's been there for a while now. He probably doesn't really like it but it's the ransom of celebrity, and he'll play along, which is fair enough. He tells his stories, gamely. Does he tell these stories repeatedly? You would think, from their content's relationship to his artistic path, but if he has told them before, it's not obvious from the fresh, convincing delivery he achieves. He's a good story teller. He recalls his father the surgeon flying his small plane to remote areas in Arizona. Scary landings on high streets when there was no runway. His father would say: see that patch of the sky over there that's particularly blue? Don't go there. They're turbulences. John Wayne! In fact, minimalism has something macho about it. For a start, there is a certain arrogance in asserting that a very simple piece is a worthy art work just because the artist says so. Nothing soft or intricate or empathic about minimalism or conceptual art, these qualities typically needing figurative art or complex abstraction.

He tells of his father letting him fly the plane. Of the  landscapes seen from above, of the different

experience of the world. Of wanting to communicate his sensory experience of the world to others. 

He speaks simply, he is humble, he often seeks the gaze of his wife in the audience, the Hollywood producer Bridget Johnson, and mentions her by name. He also refers to another man in the audience by name, maybe to break the mythology of the famous artist on stage addressing the anonymous reverential audience, which is sympathique.

But still he is there, and he speaks, filling his expected role. The Zwirner son, Lucas, moderates. He's the picture of the young golden boy, well to do, confident, educated, handsome. WASP. Does he know suffering? I guess everyone suffers at some point. It's not a criticism of Lucas. It's a genuine question. The people  I know personally that have been born into exceptional privilege do not strike me as happier than the average Josephine (the average woman informed me she prefers Josephine to Jane).

At the end of the show, people take selfies in the Infinity Room.

And this ... is definitely not a review.

Written and contributed - reluctantly - by  - -  Arabella von Arx

The Second Woman at BAM - not a review!

Alia Shawkat live on the left, broadcast on the right

The winter/spring season has started at BAM, with the new curator David Binder. Great expectations! Joseph V Melillo brought shows with a constant quality to BAM: those that weren't good were excellent. OK, they were a few misfires, but few, so very few. Walked out on maybe 3 out of 100s of shows over the years.

The Second Woman is the first staged show of the season. Created by Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, two outstanding women that do a bunch of other things in the show too.

A red box. Neon signs reads "The Second Woman", the decor is 60s/70s living room, including liquor caddy. A woman walks in, Alia Shawkat, in a beautiful red dress and stilettos. Excitement! She's pulpy, topped with a Geena Rowland style blond wig. Two camerapeople sit outside the box, filming. Image is projected on a screen next to the box.
The camerapeople get up, she gets up from her seat and goes and stands in the corner. Man walks in. Kisses her. They talk. Voices are not amplified, hard to understand. The dialogue, apparently, is inspired by Cassavetes' Opening Night. She expresses her insecurities. The man replies, pretending to reassure her, but not really. She throws noodle dish at him. Then puts music on. They dance. She tries to drag the man down to the floor. He won't. She offers him $20 (says in an article $50, and that's what the men get paid for their performance, but I saw $20, maybe fee went down) and he leaves.

That's the basic scene that gets repeated over and over.  Over 24 hours. 100 men. The men are non actors, cast locally. Her dialogue is always the same. The men have a bit more leeway. They can choose between a few options, the most important one being their reaction when she says: "and I love you": they're all uncomfortable by the expectation she sets they respond. They either say: 'and you love me', or "I love you too". The last line has a similar weight: either "I love you", "I've always loved you", "I never loved you anyway"  She is the perfect woman according to stereopical men's expectations: beautiful, sexy, submissive, insecure. But then her sexuality, her insecurities get too much when she tries to drag them to the floor: she has to be beautiful, sexy,  submissive, insecure but within pre established parameters. She says: You don't think I'm capable when that's all I want to be, I just want to be capable. Well, that's exactly what she is not expected to be.

The purpose is clearly to subvert gender definitions. But this feminist show has 1 female actor for 100 male performers! Almost as bad as the Lehman Trilogy!  (winking face here)

The images shot by the camerapeople  are edited live, turning the theater scene into a film scene with alternating close ups, details, wider shots. Visually, the show is stunning. Visually, Shawkat is stunning.

The tension between the two forms, theater and film, is stimulating. The time conventions are different. On stage, normally, time elapses only when the actors are not on stage. The scene acted out here is neither theater nor cinema. It's too short to be either. And that's fine. The actors go through the motion, the woman reacting to each man, often aping him, or at least taking clues for her behavior from theirs. But their acting is not theater acting nor cinematic. It's a different form, not unlike Lepage's 10 hr show Lipsynch also at BAM.

The men are old, young, different ethnicities. One is gay, another is a woman. The repetition of the action, the improvised differences, Shawkat's comedy makes for humor that lacks subtlety.

As the dialogue is nearly fixed, it is the physical aspect of the scene that changes: the way he opens the bag of Chinese food, the way she throws the noodles, their dance. Sometimes he takes the $20, sometimes he doesn't. She's often playful, which antagonizes the agonizing content of the dialogue.

After over 23 hrs on stage, she's still going strong. Alert. Responsive. Spontaneous. It's astonishing. It's actually better because she's looser, and so are the interactions. Over twenty-three hours into the show, she danced a cancan, and these legs were going high up in the air, no cheating. She was also still wearing her stilettos, when her feet must have been jam. There must have been bloody toes constrained in these contraptions. Maybe that kept her awake! But when she went to the floor, she was lying down flat, and thinking: soon, soon I'll be in my bed. And got up again.

Alia Shawkat still going strong after over 23hrs on stage

Here I conclude: it's a compelling show. Pfew! Expectations are not let down. The experimental aspect, the visuals satisfy the curious mind. Somehow the show could be better, the relation between the dialogue and the action could be more meaningful. A piano accompaniment punctuates the series of scenes, and also plays before the show starts. It's intense, repetitive to obsession. Most apt. So is the music track for the dance,  Aura's "A taste of love".

Interestingly, the relationship to the audience plays an important part in the show: how long will people stay? how do they decide when to leave? When to come back? Somehow their lives are brought into the space, whether they took a break to go to the gym or to make love. There is also time to think, to chat in between iterations. The audience is markedly younger on average than the usual BAM theater audience, and many are friends of the male performers, or the male performers themselves. A ticket will get you a red ribbon around your wrist, - you're not supposed to shower for 24 hrs, I guess. At one point, I took a break, went to the bar:
A beer, a glass of white wine and a bag of cookies.
31.50, says the employee, without blinking. The bag of cookies is teeny tiny, like 5 crumbs.
Dollars? I ask.
She does not smile.
It does include these BAM reusable tumblers, so I guess I'll be saving on my next drinks when I bring my own brand of mescal or armagnac in my pre bought tumbler.
I know, this last part is not all that serious or relevant, but it's an experiential blog! I can be serious too, see here.



Written - fast and furiously by -  Arabella H. von Arx

It is entitled "not a review" because the format does not follow the regular review, or essay or article, structure, with their introduction, development, conclusion. It's looser, more spontaneous and aims primarily at reproducing the experience rather than analyzing it.

The Shed - New York City: press preview

I listened to the open remarks demurely, and now here are my opening remarks, not as demure, I guess.

Remark # 1: what a dull building

The cool structure outside The Shed

Well, from the inside, the building is a disappointment, because it looks like a building. And a pretty dull one at that. From the front, the structure looks like a suspended garden conceived by an alien. The architect Liz Diller worked with the brief of not having the architecture get in the way. It’s a rectangle. It might be an artistic center, but it has no center. The entrance and lobby look like they belong to a fairly nice company building. Also, you don't know what the building looks like from the outside, a weird feeling.

She says they looked to create something flexible, change on demand, agile without defaulting to the generic, with a reference to industrial NYC. Wish the reference were more obvious. The materials are generic, and so are the colors: white, grey and black. Looks like an office building. Large theater has been compared to cathedral, but transcendence is missing. Column free performances, telescopic devices can enlarge the spaces into the plaza which will serve for open air events. That sounds pretty cool. In winter, large indoor spaces. In summer, large outdoor.

 It’s impressive that the architectural conception of the center started in 2008, the apocalyptic year where the future looked bleak. It might have affected their ambitions.

Liz said: “We were challenged to serve artists and we hope the building will challenge the  artists back.” Nicely phrased, but it doesn’t relate to this particular building, unless the artists are challenged to produce dull art. And for the visitor, there is no joy from the building itself unlike, for example, the Whitney and its stunning spaces, it’s views, its terraces. Or the New Museum.

Remark #2: art & money

The first speakers patted each other’s backs, and the major players who have the kind of money that gets you well patted. And spoke about money. The Shed's chair, Dan Doctoroff, gave this definition  "A shed is defined as an open-ended structure with tools" -well actually this definition can not be found in any dictionaries, but it serves their PR so well: tools for the artists! For the arts! Of course, the real purpose of the name is the hilarious contradiction between the cost of the simple structure it alludes to, and the price tag of this building at 500 MYO $ (not including the commissioned work?). In fact, invitees to the opening could not find “The Shed” as they should have been looking instead for “The Bloomberg Building”. And then the next speakers spoke about community, “civic imagination”, human creativity for the greater good. So on the one hand, huge amount of donations from the moneyed community that goes to who exactly? That’s one more new art center in the last decade, after the Park Armory, PS1, Brick, the Fisher Theater, The Theater for a New Audience, The New Museum. I’m forgetting some. Well, selfishly, I like it, it works for me. I love art, shows, music. The bill for these centers must amount to a couple of billions dollars collectively. How many more art centers can the city absorb? It does brings tourists in, and that’s good for the economy. But if the city, if donors do not invest in affordable housing, the people of New York will be gone. Nowadays, the only real local people in Manhattan that work there and breathe there and make babies there and are not flying to the Hamptons at the weekend, and are not bicoastal, and are not bicontinental, and have an accent when they speak, live in the projects, or in Chinatown or the Northern tip of the island.

If they go, if the indigenous people of the 5 boroughs are pushed out, New York will lose its identity. And its gritty soul. And no amount of art will buy it back. Switzerland has the means to buy art, and they do. They bought the Béjart ballet, they founded massively endowed cultural endeavors. It has not made Switzerland the vibrant place that immigrant and working class people and foreigners build together out of need, out of striving hard to make their lives within an urban context.

Remark #3: Rehearsals but the art! The performances!

Alex Poots

The building offers no joy, but the rehearsals in progress conveyed the excitement, the range of works commissioned. Alex Poots was everywhere, apparently multiplying himself to be present at every event, like the good spirit of the place. The artistic director, he is passionate and convincing, compassionate even, possibly. Hans Ulrich Obrist, the programmer, also blessed the opening with his benevolent presence.

Rehearsal in progress: The Arvo Pärt/Steven Reich/Gerhard Richter collaboration. Singers sprinkled amongst the crowd sing church-like music. The gallery is hung with Richter tapestries and banners that are so rich visually it’s ecstatic. In a panel discussion, Steven Reich spoke about 12^th century music, but it was difficult to hear what he said, they did not use mics. Didn't matter too much, just good to see him, still alive, still kicking. He made jokes, used self derision but was not convincing at it, the maestro of minimalist music.

Then from Steven Reich up a couple of floors to a rehearsal with Renee Flemmmming and a libretto written by Anne Carson. Yep. That’s why I live in NYC despite the price of real estate. The rehearsal seemed so difficult because there is a lot of text, not necessarily set to music. I can understand saying by heart a play/libretto in its order. But there it was like: OK, let’s start at “Norma Jean when she was interviewed” , and the performers just had to go right into it, there and then. For 5 minutes. Then stop. Renee commented that the sound quality had become drier. She was funny, and discreetly flamboyant (that’s possible for opera singers). The performers waited for some sound issue. Then started again for a 2 min stretch. I felt honored to spy on the proceedings. Photos not allowed, but I can vouch the text is so intriguing, written by poet extraordinaire Anne Carson, the singing beautiful, interesting direction and staging.

Rehearsal of the history of African American music. Energetic and fun. From Ray Charles to Count Basie to a  vibrant rendition of “I’m just a jealous guy”, better than the original, no kidding. Not sure what John Lennon was doing there but he was certainly influenced by African American music. As Alex Poots noted, African American music has been one of the most influential art movements in the world and to the world.

A demonstration by the performers of a martial arts musical co-conceived by Chen Shi-Zheng and the Kung Fu Panda screenwriters. Because, as Alex Poots pointed out, martial arts are an art form. Obviously trying to reach a broader audience. After only two weeks of rehearsal, the performances were pretty breathtaking, under a huge skylight above which pretty trash was flying on that windy day.

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And so, it all comes together. The excitement of creation. The broad range of the commissions.  Performers, directors, artists, musicians, stage managers, producers. Buzzing on all floors. That big beehive.

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Written as witnessed by  - -  Arabella Hutter von Arx

This blog entry was written rapidly: it's fast and serious.
Here are some of my more cautious writings:

article about black artists Yiadom-Boakye and Wilmer Wilson IV

article about Manifesta, the Nomadic biennale out to change the world

poetic fiction: 100 women talk to their daughters 

Un petit bijou de kitsch/A gem of kitsch in Midtown, New York

On croit connaître sa ville comme la paume de la main, et c'est toujours un ravissement de découvrir un événement inattendu, un endroit unique. Je parcourais rapidement la 32ème rue entre deux rendez-vous, quand une étrange entrée attire mon attention, entre deux bâtiments. Placée à distance de la rue, elle donne l'impression d'ouvrir sur un bâtiment en sous-sol, comme la Penn Station qui est si vaste et pourtant semble ne pas avoir de surface: qui a jamais vu la Penn Station de l'extérieur?

Je n'ai pas vraiment le temps, mais la tentation est irrésistible: je m'aventure. On dirait l'entrée d'une clinique ou d'un bureau des services sociaux. Il me faut immédiatement choisir entre l'église du haut ou celle du bas. Friande de paradoxe, je descends l'escalier. Pour la suite, voir les photos. 

L'église du haut a très nettement un caractère XIXème penchant vers un mélange d'extrême gothique préraphaélisme romanesque flamboyant, mais l'église du bas s'apparente aux halls de gare années 50s, quand on s'est enfin mis à penser à la facture de chauffage et on a construit des plafonds bas, et aux cryptes moyenâgeuses pour le frisson. Dans les deux, beaucoup d'Asiatiques, Philippins je suppose, et de Latinos, jeunes et vieux. Les fidèles prient à genoux avec ferveur, puis quêtent les faveurs des saints par le contact de l'or, en caressant leurs têtes, en effleurant leurs pieds.

Mérite trois étoiles dans le Guide Bleu qui ne les donnera jamais, évidemment, soyons sérieux.

We think we know our city like the palm of the hand, and it is a delight to come upon an unexpected event , a unique place. I am quickly pacing 32nd street between two appointments, when a strange doorway between two buildings catches my attention. Back from the street, it gives the impression of opening on a basement, like Penn Station, which is so vast and yet seems to have no exterior shell : who has ever seen Penn Station from the outside?

I did not really have the time, but the temptation was irresistible : I ventured. The entrance looks like it would lead to a clinic or social services offices . I must immediately choose between the lower or the higher church. Fond of the paradox , I walk down the stairs. For more, see photos.

The upper church has very much a 19th Century character leaning towards the flamboyant , but the lower church is similar to a station concourse from the 50s, when thoughts went to the heating bill , and  to a medieval crypt for the thrill. In both, many Asians, Filipinos I suppose, and Latinos, young and old. The faithful pray kneeling with fervor and hope to gain the favor of the saints by the contact of gold, stroking their heads, worshiping their feet.

Deserves three stars in the haughty Guide Bleu which will never award them, obviously, soyons sérieux s'il vous plait.

                                               

Publié par / published by Arabella Hutter

Eglise du Haut/Higher Church