Since the end of the year calls for looking back, I thought I'd post some of my video stills taken at the Tomkat.
Thought they're not abstract in a pure sense, they do move away from representation.
They also include overt references to a particular 'queer' subculture.
And represent a manifestation of my own personal queerness.
They picture a space haunted by bodies.
And references both the architecture of queer spaces and cinema.
Me.
Happy New Year!
December 30, 2008
Last Exit: 2008
3 comments:
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If the aim of queer abstraction is to destabilize the normative associations of queerness usage the extent of this route would be new avenues of context opened by perceptual shifts. Nicholas takes photography not just as a component of his perceptual contextualization but as a major facet to his thinking process as well. Michael, so far, has been utilizing photographs in this investigation on one hand pragmatically as they post easily on this format and on the other as a way to reach his thoughts. To break from a heteronormative perception and grasp this thing for you two would be like recognizing that your spectacles were no longer providing clarity and the course of action taken is not get a new prescription but begin viewing the world with the eyes you have in their own blurriness.
ReplyDeleteOn the aspect of specificity vs. generality I think immediately of Joseph Albers or Mondrian. For their own bends of abstraction they seemed to inhabit and straddle both. This claim that queer abstraction need be made by someone who is sexually queer is odd to me. The strength of Albers work is that he was able to structure it into a curriculum. If queer abstraction is held to its maker's sexual orientation I don't see how the perception of it can traverse over the identity politics read.
A queer abstraction may take place in a mentor/mentee relationship or in an instance where an artist finds himself enamored not by another, but by his practice, sexual preference aside.
I think it's best to keep in mind what I mentioned in an earlier post about the entomology of queer. It meant odd or strange, but in the patois of counterfeiters, 'queer as a three-dollar bill,' was one that couldn't pass as real. I like that as a definition--seeing queer as something that couldn't pass as real--even if it tried. Also, seeing abstraction as a, 'moving away from,' firmly makes it a strategy rather than an end result.
ReplyDeleteJust thinking about it now, it seems very post-post-structuralist. Since Baudrillard was all hung up on the 'realness' of simulacra, and I would argue that making art that doesn't pass--which is fake--is actually a more authentic project.
I'm not sure I get your connection to Albers or Mondrian. Specificity and generality as taxons can be applied to all art, and I was commenting on using it as a process. As Nicholas commented yesterday, I'd rather move away from using clichéd generalities to make my specific work. At the time it was important to go down that road and see it to its end.
The problem with identity politics is that it implies some sort of group affinity. There are times when I readily and easily see myself as a gay man, and others when I just don't get 'those people.' I've had a similar discussion with Sayre Gomez and Ian Arenas about our mixed Latino and White heritage. There are times when we don't identify with either, and times when we're around Latinos and not seen as 'real Latinos.' That being said, bi-nationalism could be seen as a queer place as well.
And lastly, I have to point out (and Meg Cranston and Jill Gigerich might concur) you don't have to be enamored with your mentor to have sex with them.
:)
Rereading my previous post, which was written in haste, I can't follow much of it myself.
ReplyDeleteMeg and Jill might agree with that sentiment. I would think to be enamored might lead more immediately to a paralyzed state or emulation.
If the word began as "strange" the effort here is something like ridding "queer" of its strangeness.