In panning Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City offers the following definition of the "cremaster," the structure after which Barney's original film cycle is titled: "a thin muscle consisting of loops of fibers derived from the internal oblique muscle and descending upon the spermatic cord to surround and suspend the testicle." I've only ever seen that explanation cited—I think it's canonical.
But how instructive is the alternative biological definition of a cremaster—a hook-shaped structure that a caterpillar creates to affix its chrysalis to a support? Working under this alternative notion, if only for entertainment purposes, I can find one convincing application in the series: in the final segment of Cremaster 3, the epilogue-ish passage called "The Order." (If you haven't seen the film, I'm probably going to lose you, but nevertheless I'll try to provide some very brief context. For the very curious, this short section of the film—and only this section—is available on DVD. I understand that the DVD cut is an "enhanced" version and doesn't appear exactly as it does in the film, for whatever it's worth.)
"The Order" follows The Entered Apprentice (Barney) as he performs his final ritual toward ascension or absolution, having failed the formal test toward the Sublime Degree of Master Mason that makes up the bulk of the movie. Staged in the ramped atrium of the Guggenheim, TEA must succeed in a challenge, level by level, overcoming an obstacle on each. Low-fi 3-D text introducing the hero and minibosses reinforces the video game feel of the piece. The time clock in this contest is provided by sculptor Richard Serra, who—in an adaptation of Serra's own notorious Splash series—slings molten vaseline down the Gugg's ramp from the topmost floor. TEA scales these levels and retraces his ground, nominally accomplishing tasks and facing along the way a Busby Berkeley–inspired chorus line (who also appear in Cremaster 1); The Entered Novitiate, played by the purrfect Paralympic Aimee Mann; a battle of the bands between 'core groups Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law; and a sculpture of a Loughton Ram. (Eric Doeringer and Google can fill you on the suggested mythology of all the various characters.)
It's a distinct departure from the rest of the series for a variety of reasons that are neither here nor there. But problematically, this epilogue mostly lacks the focus on (relatively) nonlinear sculptural processes—a criticism you might apply to Cremaster 3 as a whole, which is altogether more cinema than sculpture, but to this part in particular.
Mentally insert third arrow to pupa labeled "Matthew Barney"
The notion of the Guggenheim as "chrysalis" is not merely inviting because you get to say that butterflies inform Barney's stag film. No, it's the obvious and emphatic narrative that emerges in the atrium, practically a humanist script for the cycle of life: TEA's first challenge is the mommy line of Rockettes, whose significance in Cremaster 1 is inarguably neonatal; Agnostic Front vs. Murphy's Law is good clean dirty punk-rock adolescence; Mullins plays the bride stripped bare. A man's calling comes in the form of Barney's sculpture, and finally, cresting the development cycle, is the master, Barney's peer and his better. As a space the atrium even loosely analogizes a cocoon. (The Gugg's certainly served as such for Barney's career.)
Aaaaaand as you might say of a Matthew Barney or a Zadie Smith, I've come this far with my flight of fancy and can go no further, having no good strategy for ending it, except to say that 1) without having even seen DR9 I know I can emphatically agree with AFC's Johnson that Barney should employ neither CGI nor Björk, and 2) that I will enjoy watching this entry gradually descend, testicle-like, down the page, the (0) comments note speeding it like an anchor toward oblivion. If I've contributed a timewaster on the order of Matthew Barney Versus Donkey Kong, I'm pleased with the fruits of this afternoon.
NB: Around the date of the release of Cremaster 3, I did attempt an earnest analysis of the Cycle for a publication, only to be rewarded by the editor with the print subtitle, "It Takes Balls To Make Art This Weird!" Maybe I have lingering issues.
Pictured from left: Pat Thetic (drums), Chris #2 (bass & vocals), and Justin Sane (vocals & guitar) of Anti-Flag. McDermott (D-WA) appears at right ( in scarf) with three staffers.
If I were a Republican operative tasked with satisfying the grassroots depleted uranium lobby in my community, I'd push this meeting of the minds between Anti-Flag and the Democratic House Representative from Washington for all it's worth. The Hill reports that Jim "I've Got the Straight Edge" McDermott attracted a fan-following among the members of Anti-Flag with H.R. 2410, legislation proposed to study the long-term effects of exposure to depleted uranium (used in a variety of munitions and military-grade materials) on American soldiers. (The military assures that depleted uranium supports our troops.) Rep. McDermott even went so far as to lend some guest vox (I'm not kidding) to "Depleted Uranium Is a War Crime"—the last track on Anti-Flag's latest, For Blood and Empire, an album that calls attention to the central importance of family and faith in the American heartland.
Man, remember Anti-Flag? I used to be young and fuckin punk. Like Big McD.
Speaking of misrepresenting Muslim people and nations, DCeiver tells us about Howard Kaloogian, a GOP Congressional hopeful in California who posted a lovely image of downtown Baghdad and wagged his shaming finger at the U.S. media for painting a grim portrait of a region where peace still obtains. Of course, by "Baghdad," Kaloogian meant "Bakırköy," a suburban area of Istanbul located 1,000 miles northwest of Iraq. 'S where the airport is. Nice sea coast, giant nightclubs, huge Western shopping mall. Not so much with the GWOT.
Needless to say it was a courageous citizen journalist who fingered Kaloogian, deftly recognizing the Turkish script plastered all over the ads in the picture. (Note to the 'loogian: "edo" is a popular ice-cream franchise. You can't swing your fez in Istanbul without landing your tassle in their dondurma.) So bloggers strike again, and that may very well be the point to take away: in the wake of Ben Domenech, America's enemies are back to doing what they do best.
The intersection of policy, rhetoric, and art is a subject near and dear to our hearts here at G.p, so we're looking forward to unpacking this essay by Tyler Green in the New York Observer regarding "Without Boundary," an overcautious show of Islamic art at MoMA, and the artists from the exhibition who are criticizing the way that MoMA has selected and presented their works. Print this one and read it over your late lunch—we'll have more to say about it later in the day.
As far as I'm aware, I don' t have anything in tomorrow's City Paper. So by all means, don't read it. Instead, pick up this week's issue and re-read that great Molly Springfield profile again. Her Web site is here, and if you click through this horribly formatted search page and you can find a few things I've written about her stuff.
A few items from the other platform:
But I don't know anything about babies.
As you've read, I'm sure, in the New York Times:
The [Bush–Blair] memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.
If Feingold's censure isn't greeted by Congress like the circus come to town, I'm heading down to Capitol Hill and throwing rocks at anyone wearing a suit. You're all on notice.
Just read that—what kind of Soviet shit is that, who is this sputnik in the White House, where is our city on a hill?
Anyone receive any postcards yet? I uploaded pictures from Istanbul to Flickr, if you're interested in seeing them. Using my pedestrian point-and-click and foregoing both technical training and Photoshop software, I achieve results of a piece with recent themes advanced by the new German photographers, had they been struck or otherwise greatly confounded before shooting.
Unfortunately, Flickr abruptly restricted my alloted monthly bandwidth before I was able to completely upload my pictures. (That's called an F-stop.) So I have only images from the big three tourist destinations: Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque (pictured), and Topkapi Palace.
I have some words on Brandon Morse's "Static" in the Washington City Paper tomorrow. Heather Goss has more Morse here.
UPDATE: You can read my blurb by clicking here, at least for this week. I don't really know what the deal is with the CP Web site, but their hyperlinks exist on the lip of the abyss, into which they plunge after a weeklong blink of life.
Items for the social calendar:
MT just chewed up a thousand words on "Dada." Mother of pearl! Given the subject, I think I'm going to, I don't know, smack someone with a mackerel. Shorter version, while I rewrite: the best moment in the show was when a U of Maryland student yelled out, "That concept is dope!"
and
There is the buzz about the Robert Bechtle retrospective.
I've got a one-hitter about "wall snatchers" in tomorrow's Washington City Paper, so take a toke, but don't choke. I'll be writing reviews and listings for the paper on a semiregular basis.
Should be more on this page tomorrow. I'm finishing a freelance project that's long been dormant but has finally reared its ugly head, a manuscript I took on way back when I needed that scrylla. On the bright side, I'm sure to never forget the finer points of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Oh, wait, that's awful.
Anyone know how I can make MT display Alt + [keystrokes] coded characters (e.g., accents, em dashes)? MT 3.2 seems to <3 the &whatever; command characters, but I'm used to doing it the other way and don't want to learn a new trick. Where I usually find an em dash by typing Alt + 0151, now I get —. It just won't do.
To quote Instapundit, "Disturbing, if true." Lenny Campello comments on a case involving the suspension of high-school fine arts teacher Peter Panse, allegedly for recommending that his students take live nude figure–drawing classes in order to bolster their portfolios for college applications (according to Diana Cahn's account in the Times Herald-Record).
But according to a report Cahn filed several weeks later in the Times Herald-Record, Panse was suspended "on charges [that] he was recruiting his high school students to take his proposed nude figure-drawing class outside of school." Further complicating the story are revelations in the report that Panse was reprimanded in 1997 over 12 incidents in which he made "sexually imbued comments" to female students in his classes.
Taking these facts into consideration, as well as a recent psychological scar on the Catskills-area, New York school district—then-superintendent Robert Sigler was arrested and imprisoned in 2003 for molesting a minor [ed. 3/9]—it seems reasonable that the school board would aggressively monitor interactions between students and teachers.
Was it prudent to take disciplinary action against Panse, given the facts and context of the case? No transgression (or class, for that matter) took place, it appears from the reports; several students report having merely taken his advice to pursue outside classes and benefitted from them. But surely after the 2003 incident, all teacher-student interactions would be strictly codified by the school board; at the very least, parents would certainly expect that to be the case. By offering to conduct a high school class outside the purview of Middletown High School, Panse does not appear to have acted with sensitivity to the rules, the feelings of some of his students' parents, or his own marked record.
A January 17 editorial in the T H-R drives at a crucial distinction in the case:
[Panse] faces two disciplinary hearings, one for recruiting, soliciting or encouraging students to take his private lessons and another for doing so after he had been warned to avoid any comments that students could construe as . . . sexual.
Clearly, there's nothing sexual about a live nude figure–drawing class in the minds of adults. It is these adults on the campus who must instruct young students that the nude figure has artistic applications that are free of and distinct from the body's sexual connotations. Students do not instinctively know this.
Young people arrive to the classroom from different walks in life; it's only appropriate to consider the whole needs of the student body, and this decision-making process ought to be the joint effort of students, teachers, parents, and school administrators. Panse forgot that he is not just teaching nude figure drawing but working in concert with other adults to provide a learning environment that students will recognize as safe; by excluding other adults from the decision-making process (i.e., by appealing to students, not admistrators or parents, to start an extracurricular course), Panse opens himself to suspicion.
UPDATE: An online petition to reinstate Panse reads as follows:
This petition calls on the Middletown School District Board of Education to reverse the suspension of high school art teacher Pete Panse. It demands specifically the immediate reinstatement of Mr. Panse to his position as art teacher at Middletown High Scool, NY, and public acknowledgement from the Board of Education that the practice of teaching figure drawing including nude models by advanced art students does not constitute any kind of sexual impropriety, nor does recommending such practice to students.
To my eye, this oversimplifies the case against Panse.
UPDATE II: More at Unfogged, where LizardBreath and I are tentatively towing the administration line but others have taken up Panse's cause.
Because it's my blog, and I'll cry if I want to. As should be made clear below the cut, I won't be attending Scope or Armory this weekend and possibly may delay my next trip to New York until April at the earliest. Frankly, I'm wondering how I'm going to "attend" such must-not-miss venues as the grocery store for the foreseeable future.
As my debit card and my checkbook were both stolen, and because the powers that be froze my account last week in response to charges made in London and Istanbul (even though I totally called before my trip and had my account annotated to reflect the fact), Bank of Fascism has not merely suspended but revoked that checking account. That's the top-level frustration in the nightmarish matrioshka of nested bureaucratic dead-ends that promises to define my life for the next month. By the time I've found my way through this labyrinth of crises that beget crises, that chick from There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly will be buying my rounds at the bar.
Indulge me, if you have a sympathetic ear: In order to start the new B of F account—and, for that matter, access the money in the old account, which is all my money, at least until my replacement credit cards arrive (in 10–14 soul-crushing business days—if only debt in America could be accessesed as quickly as it grows! )—I need identifying documentation. In order to get said identifying documentation, I need identifying documentation. A District driver's license is out of the question, since I was never licensed in the District. There's simply no getting my Social Security card, passport, or health insurance card without a photo ID or my birth certificate. Even that taped-up student ID that shows me bone skinny and believe-it-or-not blonde would help, but it's all in the hands of the person who fulfilled some rather extravagent consumer impulses at the gas station at 14th and Euclid at 4:45 a.m. this morning.
Now, I gather from the fact that my mom answered my increasingly frantic inquiries as to the whereabouts of my birth certificate with "still looking, dear," shortly before she stopped answering at all, that that search through the Capps annals and vaults is just as likely to turn up the Ark of the Covenant as anything useful. (Seriously, Mom, what t f.) So it all hinges on a non–driver's license identification form to be issued by the state of Texas, a slip of paper, the sort they give you while you're waiting for your real replacement license to arrive. Apparently that, in concert with a few tax forms, will suffice to earn my District license, assuming I can scrounge up the scrylla to pay the fees.
But it should be said that Texas, for all its charms, so many of which I've gone to great lengths to ennumerate on this here Web page, is not the most efficient provider of social services among these fifty, nifty United States. Sue and I joke about a woman that she encountered when she was working in a more tedious capacity than she does these days, at a former job that required her to interact occasionally with the county court. Once, after combat with a court employee via telephone (the prize being contested: a document that the court was obligated to provide to her), Sue took the fight to the courthouse. There she asked her opponent face to face for that which was rightfully hers, and she was met with the best bureaucratic verse since they-pretend-to-pay-us-and-we-pretend-to-work: "I am not getting up."
Let that serve as context for the fact that the Lone Star State, one of the most populous states in the Union and a hell of a friendly place to boot, has just one telephone line for driver's license replacements. I hadn't heard a busy signal in years before I listened to that jingle all day long today. For a really fucking frustrating time, call 512-424-2600. Assuming I finally get through? I'm looking at three to four weeks to process.
But it wasn't my laptop that got snatched, so I know I'm obliged to quit bitching and look on the bright side. Probably there's some angle that I haven't considered, and it won't take a full month to get my life in order. But I think we can go brighter than that. So here goes: I can no longer prove that I exist to the State. I can't go to bars any more. Surely this is the time in a young man's life when he assumes an identity as a conservative vigilante anti-hero. Anyone have a copy of Darkman I can borrow?
So we were robbed or burglarized, however you want to say it, during the night while roommate and I were sleeping. The sorry, sorry part of it is that fearsome Wreck was curled up on my bedroom floor last night until about 3 or 4 a.m., when he started barking like madness. That's characteristic Wreck crazy, so I groggily threw some pillows at him and plugged my ears. When I got fed up with his noise and let him downstairs, I guess it was too late.
Now, my wallet's been stolen in addition to my trusty satchel, so at the time, I have zero forms of identification—no driver's license and no passport, which was still with my stuff post Istanbul. Also, my Social Security card, and it was only even in my wallet because I'd discovered it in a big mess of files and meant to put it some place more secure. This burglar in fact just stole my identity!
So! How's your day starting?
My roommate doesn't know what Fauvism is. I'm going to buy the new Janson's and beat him with it.
(courtesy of Sommer)
No Tate Modern for me, sorry. I blame London Heathrow International airport. I spent nearly 2 of my 6 layover hours standing in queue for passport control, finally leaving the airport only to find that were simply no eastbound trains leaving from the Acton Town stop or the orange line transfer on the Underground. (Map, but it won't help you any, trust me.) Faced with the option of circumnavigating London on the stop-plentiful purple line or actually catching my flight, I turned back, paid $45.68 (£7) for fish-and-chips, and resumed my place in the ungodly passport queue.
But more London unpleasantness on my return flight (a two-hour delay) rewarded me with a fairly awesome scene. At any U.S. international airport, arriving passengers are ushered through two separate security gates: one for non-U.S. nationals, and one for travelers who wear pajamas to fly. While waiting in the relatively short passport line, I noticed a trooper changing channels on the overhead TVs that show you what documents you need, how not to be a terrorist, etc. I was hoping he'd put on the Mavs/Suns game I saw listed in the paper (go Mavs!), but I'd forgotten that it was time for the Awards.
So here's a study in continents. On the American side of the passport divide—which works very well for my purposes; it was nice of the FAA to set this up so metaphorically—a few people set down their bags as most started to watch the show. But the other side of the room devolved. People fell completely out of line/queue/order. Luggage was abandoned, along with children and the elderly. National and ethnic conflicts, buried for the purposes of exchanging in the public sphere, erupted to the surface; recriminations flew as erstwhile fellow travelers clawed at one another for the best vantage. People even began to exhibit the characteristics of their more brutal forebears. Polite Scandanavians—turned Viking! I spotted an ancient Assyrian in the mix! At least 8% of the crowd were—Ghengis Khan! The French . . . continued to surrender.
There were screams, not muted but really energetic, and a lot of movement until a trooper finally settled people down. Maybe the Oscars represent something deeply American for people more excited about their arrival into Dulles than I was at the time, but that explanation feels condescending. I don't know, but it was quite a scene. Final analysis: We control our resources wisely, we can extend our lease on this hyperpower gig.
But—but—there is a huge advantage to watching film on the big screen! The brains just never splatter quite so convincingly on the home entertainment system.
I get what Eszter's saying. I asked the same thing way back when about commercials for DVD technology . . . being played on VHS casettes. All those amazing visuals! and sounds! that you couldn't possibly live without! were intended to make you run-not-walk to the store to buy a DVD player, despite their being amazing on the video-casette player you already own. One thing I did notice in the hour or so I caught of last night's blowjob to the movie theater: the clips from Star Wars were certainly, obviously pulled from the original version and not the THX Remastered or Special Edition collections. I caught one quick scene from Return of the Jedi, but I can say that with absolute confidence. So there may be something to Eszter's sotto voce suggestion that these beloved but grainy clips were subtle signals, intended to make you recall that, yeah, those did look good in the theater. . . .
Back in the States for less than a day and I've already been called a "dirty skimmer and a tax collector" for refusing to hand over all the baklava that I promised to carry back for one friend. Precious, precious baklava. It's going to be tough to resist immediately booking another flight over once this stuff goes.
So, Istanbul! So much to say: it was my first trip to a Muslim nation, which wasn't so jarring considering Istanbul's secular temperament, but hearing a call to prayer for the first time is an astonishing, goosebump-raising experience. While I was there I ate the best meal I've ever had. My haul of Near-Eastern spices, teas, and china makes Marco Polo's look like the contents of a college student's minifridge. I visited the palatial Çemberlitas hamam for a traditional Turkish bath, though I failed to hit up the one built for Barbarossa or the one (featured in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) that's seen the tushes of Franz Liszt, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Edward VIII. On the visual-sensory tip, in addition to such awesome sites as the Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque, and Süleymaniye Mosque, I saw a Byzantine church replete with mosaics based on apocrypha—you won't find illustrations of St. Zacharias and the Twelve Suitor Sticks of Mary in your family Bible. And I developed a minor back problem carrying home books on the great imperial architect Mimar Sinan.
And, of course, "I" should be "we" in all the above, and it's been too long since I've been able to say that. Great times; adventures and pictures are forthcoming.
