VOGUE

Tropes can elicit ooohs, aaahs, oh no, not that again—a place where affect is held in suspension over the historical and its signifiers. It is the experience of “I know what the overused parts are and will they only remain as themselves, or is there some combinatory manner in which they achieve something unpredictable that pushes away from the anticipation of being disappointed, and autonomous.”

Destinations can be like this.

In a week, the cultural procession transversing the Americas, from Mexico City (D.F.) to New York encountered three points where sculpture, choreography and painting—that pushed beyond the used.

Airport lounges can have a similar effect. A place that is a point in between. American Express oddly, or not so oddly is capitalizing on this space in the growth economies of Latin America and India. By flashing three colors, gold, platinum and black—one can become an officer commanding a Roman century, or at the least, have AMEX’s idea of status and gain entry to their Centurion Clubs where they capture all of your information. Green, the most ubiquitous and the foundation of the entire AMEX empire is too plebian to gain entry. It truth, the green card is actually the signifier of status.

Status like taste is almost impossible to predict or comprehend and is a myth that Edward Bernay was the master of creating.

Mythology appeared in Trajal Harrell’s dance performance, Antigone, jr. at Third Streaming, a presentation that was billed as a presentation of Performa 11 on Sunday, November 13th. Although not a commission, it unexpectedly warranted attendance. There were the necessary, but obligatory combination of references that included Greek mythology, Vogueing and the Judson Church. Harrell and his fellow performer Thibault Lac started the piece by sitting amongst the audience to don their costumes and subsequent changes, intentionally forgetting a prop, that disrupted the start and made it appear as if it had to begin all over again. Being set-up like this is akin to watching a speaker on stage who’s mobile phone begins to ring and they then proceed to answer it in the middle of their presentation. But, Antigone, jr. proved to be entirely other and nothing like this. Lac’s angularity and double jointedness moved in counter to Harrell’s grounded Hellenistic figure. It was a humorous exercise in contrasts that was subtle and effective and brought to mind Meg Stuart’s choreography and her company Damage Goods. Yes, dance can be funny.

An incestual alliance of history and its forms, Harrell choreographed scale shifts (S, M, L, XL) that invoke Rem Koolhaas and the book designed by Bruce Mau. The piece included narration with chants, raps and cheers and the reading of an excerpt from Sophocles’ play by Lac who was seated on the floor. One portion of the performance included a hilarious riff on the name Trajal and all of the possible interpretations and mis-pronuciations. Structurally, the vocalizations digressed into the gilded lines of Chanel and other bespoke luxury brands that are inked in the pages of Vogue.

Monica Sosnowska’s exhibition at Kurimanzutto in Mexico City opened on Saturday, November 12, 2011.
Sosnowska’s work utilizes the materials and structures of architecture. Her intention exposes the essentiality of the constituents of construction: rebar, concrete, steel, balustrades, hinges, etc. in a manner that makes them newly visible as cultural referents that simultaneously makes their materiality disappear, or reappear as a reenactment of urbanism that is displaced.

Finally, the end of disco, or the umpteenth time it has been reborn, was not over at the Jim Hodges exhibition at Barbara Gladstone. An invisible machine in the ceiling choreographs a fluorescent drop painting that upon entering the gallery, has the appearance of a large unfinished Donald Judd plywood piece. But… when one turns the corner they encounter a theatricality that distillates day-glo tempera paint and the viewer into a combine of Turrell, Pollock, and Apfelbaum, but it is uniquely its own work. As Warhol desired, to be a machine, this work is a mechanism that instrumentalizes itself to produce a painting. The aurality is in equal volume to the visuaity and the anticipation of each drop is worth watching and waiting for.

Anticipation and our expectations are related to what we know and then what we see that is not what we think we know.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2011 at 8:00 am. It is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.