Carrion Birds: Part One
I am a pretty worthless human being who does not invest much into… well, anything, any more. There comes a time in your life, especially in your mid-forties, when the endless array of CGI reboots, flashes of starlet beaver, and new neocon absurdities into yet more dusty Arab countries, fails to provide the necessary CPR jolt to a jaded palate. Outrage becomes increasingly hard. Hope more so. Perspective most of all. It’s all just a big muckety-muck of stuff anyway, right? If there is a God then he’s probably a French philosopher: colliding fabulosities with mundanities, with an infinite number of footnotes written in twenty-meter high rock letters spiraling into a black hole. Who gives a shit?
Then once in a while something comes along, something so fabulously inappropriate and inept - not something intrinsically worthless like, say, a cable show about bounty hunters; but - even better - something that marshals qualities of imagination, sensitivity and planning (it’s always brilliant when intelligent people do really dumb shit) - that the sheer monumental lameness of the exercise restarts my dull ancient heart. It makes me want to care again, if only to lurch up into a crowd - any crowd - and give vent to a righteous slack-jawed bemusement.
So let’s hear it for modern art for sticking the electrical pads on my chest, once again (dear old modern art!), and shouting “Clear!” Let’s hear it for politically-engaged conceptual art for creating the equivalent of colonic irrigation for my brain pan with fine artist (and what a “fine” artist he must be) Paul Villinski’s contribution to the upcoming biennial Prospect.1 New Orleans this November: a series of artistic incursions into the still-traumatized heart of the post-Katrina Gulf Coast community.
As an exercise, Prospect 1 is certainly less cynical than the government’s response (erm… “d-uh!”): a series of site-specific works by 80 artists that will be assembled to reinvigorate the local economy by injecting cultural activity into the galleries and streets, a classic example of creative professionals rallying around a cause to help as best they can. According to the press release:
“Paul Villinski’s artwork transforms discarded, “worthless” materials into objects of new meaning and beauty. For Prospect.1 New Orleans, he has created the Emergency Response Studio, a repurposed thirty-foot FEMA trailer, like those deployed to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, transformed from a generally depressing symbol into a visually engaging, solar and wind-powered mobile artist’s studio. The structure can be used in post-disaster sites to house displaced or visiting artists, enabling them to immerse themselves and chronicle unfolding events through their art.”
But let’s think, for a minute - all press release generic artworld gobbledegook aside - who this art must be meant for; because surely the overarching intent must be to honor, in some potent way, the real, visceral, experiences of the dispossessed and bereaved? To make an effort of particular resonance for, and to, the inhabitants of New Orleans, as part of a grass roots revival of culture and commitment that reflect the unique way this very city built its own incredibly vibrant identity from the ground up in the first place (and let’s also let it go that, in any real historical perspective, the visual arts is the idiot cousin at this particular party…)? Anything else would just be grotesque dilletantism, wouldn’t it? Not that any of the worthy personnel involved means any disrespect - these are compassionate liberals, after all - just that the magnitude of the venture must demand protean levels of sensitivity. Are they up to it?
This couldn’t be just - perish the thought - for the… visitors? Could it?
Well… let’s imagine that it’s not for the visitors (because most us can’t possibly know what so many people went through during the Katrina disaster, so we only have imagination to fall back on. And the truth is that most of us, in the absence of first-hand experience, can’t even imagine it either, because or imagination is a tiny and superficial frail thing when measured against the realities of those days. We don’t have either the vocabulary, or the right, so I’m just going to have to pretend to approximate, okay?).
So let’s imagine this: that Mr. Villinski and the biennial organizers have created “Emergency Response Studio” for the indigents. After the fact, so to speak…
Let’s imagine - as an indigent - that you were sat in your home with your kids asleep upstairs, with one eye on the news reports and the other on your husband in the yard outside, and he’s working on the car to make sure it can start pretty quick if he can borrow some plugs and get that ornery mutha going. Let’s imagine you’re old and tired and already pretty scared by the time your children, gaunt, multi-tasking, pull on extra sweatshirts whilst dragging the radio upstairs behind them as they rush you up into the attic. Let’s imagine you’re a child sat on a roof, and in the distance you see a strange dark mass of black water breach the levee, and your young soft-boned funky and recently-learned understanding of physics goes out the window, and the sound of the water as it demolishes the house nearest the levee doesn’t synch up with the image of it disintegrating ‘cos there’s a delay and your ears are cold and your fuzzy eyes aren’t working proper, obviously…
IN PART TWO: what happens when you survive the flood and they won’t let you in to the art opening because you’re not from Stuttgart or can’t prove you write for Frieze magazine.