Archive for the ‘Queer Voice’ Category

Weird but Useful Stuff

July 29 2010

Photo: Darcey Sawicz

post by Rachel Pastan

It’s the change of the seasons here at ICA. Just as you can feel the approach of autumn out on the street in September, here in the museum I feel the end of Queer Voice approaching and the murmurs of the new exhibition season getting ready to blow in. This Sunday evening the projectors and audio loops will be turned off for the last time. The guards will go home until the new shows open in mid-September, the tour guides will have a few weeks to bone up on some new artists, and the crew will show up to disassemble the silver Andy Warhol listening cube and the Jack Smith chaise longue and roll up the carpeting.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the preparations for Set Pieces (click here to read that piece), guest-curated for ICA by artist Virgil Marti from works from the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). Since then, Virgil and Robert and Darcey have gone over to the PMA to measure some of the objects Virgil is using, especially some marble busts he’s going to put on a pouf. Actually he’s going to make poufs especially for the marbles, which include a bust of Napoleon and another big bust of a woman lying on her back. There are some concerns about the stability of the marble woman, who is actually designed to be displayed upright, but Virgil is confident that any mounts they need to use to secure her in place can be hidden in the fluff of the pouf. He can fluff up the fluff, he says.

Down at the PMA, he asks one of the art handlers to put the woman on a big piece of craft paper so he can trace her for reference when he builds the pouf. She’s so heavy, it takes two people in purple Nitrile gloves to lift her.

Not everything Virgil needs to see is down in storage. Some of it is up in photography already, waiting its turn to have its picture taken—along with a fabulous life-sized silver gander that I can’t wait to see in the show. Other stuff is up in conservation, including two ivory candlesticks that are being cleaned.

This, it turns out, is how you clean ivory candlesticks: with saliva. They have little pots of sterilized saliva up there in conservation, and they dip Q-tips into it and slowly clear away the dirt. Saliva! I go home and tell my husband, and he smiles and says, “Is it elephant saliva?”

Then he tells me about this nuclear fusion experiment he was once involved in where they suspended a tiny, frozen-hydrogen sphere inside a very small gold cylinder, then sent powerful laser beams in. (Doesn’t that sound like it could be a contemporary art installation??) The trick is, how do you suspend such a miniscule sphere inside such a puny gold cylinder without using metal bars that would mess up the experiment?

The answer: spiderwebs. Spider silk (as anyone who’s read Charlotte’s Web knows) is thin and strong and abundant. When my husband asked the guys at the lab if they used any special kind of spider, they told him, “We use whatever kind of spider we find around the lab. When they die, we send out an email asking people to bring in spiders from their offices, or from home or wherever.”

There’s something glorious in this—the way there are still problems nature can solve for us; the way the needs of both art and science can sometimes be answered by common stuff we usually think of as disgusting.

Also, the way people you never see—people behind the scenes—are resourcefully solving problems you never thought of in ways you never would have dreamed.

Do you have a story about people using weird stuff to solve unusual problems? If so, please describe it in the comments section below. I’ll try to drum up some weird ICA prizes for the best weird solutions. Deadline: August 15.

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Frankenstein Script

June 29 2010

post by Rachel Pastan

Fifteen days before Queer Voice opened, Darcey was in the conference room with all this stuff laid out on the table. She was wearing white art handling gloves and making notes.

“What’s that?” I asked.

She explained that it was a Jack Smith script for the exhibition, one of a bunch of scripts that would be on display for a work Smith eventually titled “Lucky Landlordism of Lotusland,” Modern Adaptation of R.B. Sheridan’s “The Critic.” (Yes, that whole long thing is the title.)

“What are you doing, exactly?” I asked.

“I’m doing a condition report,” she said.

“A what?”

Darcey is ICA’s Assistant Registrar, and part of her job is to look at every single object that arrives at the museum from a lender and write down exactly what condition it’s in when it gets here. That way we know if we damage the thing while it’s here, and—importantly—we can prove that we didn’t if we didn’t. With the opening of Queer Voice just around the corner, objects were arriving daily. Darcey seemed happy. “It’s like Christmas,” she said.

This script is from 1973, and it looks it. Darcey said they were calling it the Frankenstein Script, because it’s pieced out of bits of pages taped together. (This is how I used to edit, too, as late as the 80s, with scissors and tape—everyone did.) These bits of tape are browned now, and the paper is yellowed and dog-eared. The type is faded typewriter type. It’s a lovely, poignant object, one of eight scripts exhibited on a long narrow table I saw half-built down in the gallery during installation. Talk about something looking patched together like Frankenstein. In the photo here it’s been painted, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

The way we’re exhibiting the scripts shows how Smith worked on them. First he hand-wrote, then he typed up what he had written, then he edited that copy and retyped, and so on. The exhibition features four pages from each of the eight versions of the script—pp. 1-4 of the handwritten version, pp. 5-8 of the first typed version, pp. 9-12 of the first edited version, and so on, so you can read it in an orderly way but in increasingly finished drafts.

My question is: what kind of person saves all their drafts? A packrat or an egotist? How do you know, or intuit, that someday someone will want to exhibit them?

Or maybe just an exhibitionist? Is there a connection between being the sort of person who would make Flaming Creatures (which was banned as pornographic and denounced on the Senate floor by Strom Thurmond—always good publicity for an artist) and being the kind of guy who would save all your drafts?

I bet Jack Smith would have liked to see his scripts on exhibition. Sadly, he died in 1989 of AIDS-related pneumonia.

* * *

You can see the script for “Lucky Landlordism of Lotusland,” Modern Adaptation of R.B. Sheridan’s “The Critic,” and many other cool things, in Queer Voice, which is open at ICA through August 1.

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John Kelly

June 22 2010

post by Rachel Pastan

A few weeks before Queer Voice opened, John Kelly stopped by to see the gallery where the show was being installed—a series of black spaces and rooms that until recently had held Jenelle Porter’s Dance with Camera exhibition. Now the video screens and old-fashioned movie projectors were gone, and the crew was busy moving large scaffoldings around and painting black walls blacker. Kelly, a performance artist, dancer, and vocalist, was getting the tour, and then he and Ingrid Schaffner, Queer Voice’s curator, would discuss the video clips and scripts he’d brought along.

A lot of material got ordered for Queer Voice: records and dolls, a vocoder (the machine Laurie Anderson famously used to alter her voice). Director of Curatorial Affairs Robert Chaney spent a lot of time on the phone ordering things. John Kelly asked for old theater seats and Robert found some on ebay in Youngstown, Ohio. A guy drove them here in a truck that kept breaking down, and Robert had to come in at midnight to help unload. (I happened across them in the dark auditorium when I was looking for a quiet place to write and sat down on them for a while, not knowing they were special.) Ingrid took John Kelly in to see what he thought of the seats, and he liked them. “What year are they from?” he asked, but nobody knew.

“The guy on ebay told me they were historic,” Robert said. “He thought he could make a lot of money selling them to people with home theaters, but they only want big cushy chairs.”

Lucky theater seats! They got loose from their bolts and traveled halfway across the country to become part of this exhibition. Rejected by the wealthy, they have become art.

* * *

Queer Voice will be open at ICA through August 1.

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Index

June 16 2010

post by Rachel Pastan

“Do we have vibrato?” Ingrid asks. “I thought we had vibrato.”

“No,” Lucy says. “We have vibration. We have staccato. We have ululation.”

“Let’s put it in,” Ingrid says. “Page 32.” Ingrid Schaffner, ICA’s Senior Curator, and Lucy Gallun, the museum’s Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow, are working on the index for the catalogue to Queer Voice exhibition, Ingrid’s exhibition of audio recordings and scripts that investigates what it means to “sound strange.” Last month Ingrid sent out an email to a whole bunch of people—artists, curators, scholars, singers—asking them what they thought “queer voice” was, and she got back a whole bunch of responses: 87 poems, reminiscences, stories, photographs, lists, recipes. Some people wrote one sentence; others, many pages. And Ingrid, who has never done an index, decided it would be fun to do one now.

An index, it turns out, is a lot of work. Days from now, checking and rechecking references, everyone involved will be a little tired of it, but right this minute, reading through the compendium of responses and deciding what words will go in, it’s irresistible.

It’s fun to see what names show up over and over again: Kenneth Anger, Roland Barthes, John Cage, Truman Capote, Paul Lynde. By contrast, Boy George and Allen Ginsberg (next to each other) are only referenced once. Some words, too, come up a lot: activism, AIDS, blood, laughter, lisp, throat, truth. I love the words for sounds (and sound’s opposite): cackle, crackle, cry, hiss, sigh, silence.

“Does dyke go in?” someone asks. How to decide? Queer itself is out (it appears too often), as is gay for the same reason (though gay pride celebration is in), but we have fag and faggot. We have lesbian (one entry only). We have multiple drag queens: Lady Bunny, Dirty Martini, Mistress Formika, Dynasty Handbag.

Dyke goes in. So do elephant, erasure, mock-turtlenecks, and ventriloquism, which has four references. We have everything from ACT-UP to Xenobia.

For a while we argue about alphabetizing acronyms, always a tricky business. We argue about whether you include The at the end of titles after a comma, as in Wizard of Oz, The, or whether you just leave it out. I consult The Chicago Manual of Style and am surprised to find it more personal on the subject of indexing than on any other subject for which I’ve ever consulted it: “Whoever the indexer is, he or she should be intelligent, widely read, and well acquainted with publishing practices—also level-headed, patient, scrupulous in handling detail, and analytically minded. This rare bird must…work at top speed to meet an almost impossible deadline.” I look around the room, suddenly doubtful, then read on: “Copyediting a well-prepared index can be a minor pleasure, an ill-prepared one, a major nightmare.”

Neither pleasure nor nightmare appear in our index (though we do have fuck and dream), but both words seem like they should.

What The Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t say is that an index can also be a kind of poetry. Reading through ours is an almost sensual pleasure: Cape, Castratti, Cavett (Dick), Celtic Frost, Chic. Tone, tongue, transcendence, translation. Ukulele, Ululation, Underline. Feel the syllables on your lips. Cackle them, growl them, lisp them, speak them in tongues.

* * *

Queer Voice is open at ICA through August 1. Pick up a copy of the catalogue there or order on line here.

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Opening

May 7 2010

Ingrid Schaffner talking about Queer Voice

post by Rachel Pastan

I’ve never used a counter before, and I’m actually kind of excited about it. My job for the next hour is standing by the front doors and counting everyone who comes in, while my colleague Christy, who is much better dressed than I am—not to mention taller—politely makes sure no one gets in who’s not on the list.

1, 2, 3, 4. A woman comes in wearing a bright orange jacket and glasses with bright green frames. 29, 30, 31. An ICA board member comes in wearing an expensive suit with a silver lizard on his lapel. An artist in the video show comes in wearing a lavender dress. A woman comes in carrying a bag I’m afraid to handle—it looks so expensive—but I stash it for her with William behind the desk. 83, 84. A man comes in wearing a button that says “Post Queer.” I think I know what that means, but then I think again and realize I have no idea.

This is the opening of two ICA shows, Queer Voice and Video Art: Replay, Part 3: Ludicrous! It’s rather amazing, counting all these people streaming in to our usually quiet museum. In the lobby they gather around Ingrid, who curated Queer Voice, and she gives them some things to think about before leading them through the doorway into the dark space echoing with exclamations, utterances, songs and murmurs—nine artists speaking at once, though the show is designed so you can listen to them one at a time. Some of them, like Jack Smith and Andy Warhol, speak from beyond the grave, Andy into a silver painted cube—a sort of miniaturized Silver Factory—and Smith down from a height onto a lovely fainting couch on which the listener (I almost wrote viewer) is invited to lie.

On one wall, Laurie Anderson’s androgynous form sings “O Superman.” On another, John Kelly’s passionate diva sings in a glorious counter tenor. In the next room, you can rest on metal-framed beds and follow Ryan Trecartin’s voice up and down a hysterical register under a musical haze.

Queer Voice, which is not exactly a typical art exhibition (there’s almost nothing on the walls, the idea is to listen) is typical in this way: there are a lot of things in a room and you can decide which one to pay attention to. Upstairs in Ludicrous! however, there’s just one video playing at a time. Today it’s Mary Reid Kelley, painted white with black outlines like a two-dimensional drawing, situated in a white room at a white table with a white tea cup, reciting a long rhyming story hypnotically. What’s fun about this show is that the video changes every week, so that it unfolds over time. You need to come back again and again to really understand the curator’s vision, how the whole thing fits together. Which is how life is, too.

Back at my post, I realize I’ve seen this tall man in the blue shirt before. He must have gone out for a cigarette and come back in, so I don’t count him. Someone has a baby in a carrier. Someone else (William shows me) is wearing a wig. Maybe lots of people are wearing wigs—I like that idea!—but I can’t tell. A man comes in and says he just saw two rainbows. That has to be a sign of something.

People drink wine, exchange kisses, gossip and preen and chat. Their voices spiral up toward the second floor, swirling and echoing. 206, 207. Since I’m thinking about queer voices, I can’t help starting to think that all the voices sound queer—certainly the crazy cacophony of them at this opening! At the dinner afterward, ICA’s director, Claudia Gould, will say how the queerest voice is maybe one’s own.

In her gallery notes for Ludicrous! Jenelle wrote: “Many of the videos immerse audiences in magnificently bizarre worlds.” I look around the lobby at the happy crowd in their hats and high heels and bright scarves and golden purses drinking sangria, and I think that seems just about right.

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Miranda Opening

May 5 2010


post by Rachel Pastan

Welcome to Miranda, ICA’s blog! A couple of days ago our spring shows, Queer Voice and Video Art: Replay, Part 3: Ludicrous! opened in the galleries, and today Miranda, an inside look at what happens inside the museum, opens in cyberspace.

This is a theme at ICA lately: connecting the literal space of the galleries and the limitless space of the internet, so that what we do here—creating avenues for people to engage and connect with the art of our time—is available to more people at more times in more ways.

This blog is one small way.

I hope you’ll read Miranda regularly, and leave comments—both for us here at ICA and for each other. I’d love this space to be a forum for conversation about contemporary art and culture, and I’m as eager to hear what you think as I am to tell you about our shows and events and processes and ideas.

The morning before the opening, there was a palpable tension up in the offices as well as down in the galleries, where the installation crew was making final tests and adjustments. The catalogue for Queer Voice arrived, and everyone was excited about that! Ingrid, who curated the exhibition, was putting together a pin-board of images to complement the voices you’ll hear in the galleries. Someone had to go out and buy pins for it. Robert (who together with Shannon, the head preparator, oversees installation) was waiting for an amplifier he ordered overnighted, which he needed to run the sound isolation bell Ingrid wanted for the Laurie Anderson material. He was also waiting for one of the artists, Ryan Trecartin, to show up to make some last minute projection decisions.

Shannon, meanwhile, was busy adjusting sound levels so that all the different voices in the exhibition won’t create total cacophony (but maybe just a little interesting cacophony). She changed the legs for the Jack Smith chaise longue from wood to metal so it looks more like something from his era. She made user-friendly directions for the record player and the Vocoder that you (you!) can play with if you want to come in and queer your own voice (if it’s not queer already).

Meanwhile, the usual work of the museum continued. Mail was sorted, meetings were held, next year’s shows were budgeted, the phone rang and rang. The phone is always ringing here. People call to get information about the shows, they call to order prints and catalogues, they call to find out what subway stop we’re near. They call to find out if we’re open and how much admission costs. It’s always free!

Just like Miranda.

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Posted in Public Programs, Queer Voice, Video Art: Replay | 3 Comments »