stop.gap 001 by Owen Christoph

stop.gap ART / THEORY / CRITICISM / POLITICS

summer 2017 - 001 summer 2017 1

EDITOR’S FOREWORD OWEN CHRISTOPH

EXCERPTS FROM RETROGRADEAMNESIA ROBERTO QUADRA

SHARED FURNITURE: SARA AHMED & MONA HATOUM OWEN CHRISTOPH

MATERIALISM IN THE AGE OF COMMODIFIED AUTHENTICITY, WELLNESS, NEOLIBERALISM, AND THE REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECT BLAISE BAYNO-KREBS

SELECTED WORKS

ALEX PABARCIUS

CULTURAL PROPERTY & CENSORSHIP AT THE 2016 WHITNEY BIENNIAL OWEN CHRISTOPH

MUMBLE RAPTURE CHRISTIAN BLACK

SELECTED WORKS NADINE NG

SELECTED WORKS ZENO SCOTT

ENCOUNTERING OUR SHADOW(S) MARY BLAISE TURGEON

A SILVER LINING REIVEW OF DOCUMENTA 14

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REVIEWS …THIS IS A FREE ZONE OWEN CHRISTOPH

SELECTED WORKS ROWAN HYLAND

OWEN CHRISTOPH

...DEVIL’S FREEDOM (LA LIBERTAD DEL DIABLO)

MATILDA HAGUE

EDITOR’S FOREWORD OWEN CHRISTOPH

stop.gap originally began as as a student-run pop-up exhibition space and archival project in the fall of 2016 ; however, for the most part, it remained in a not-yet-realized, conceptual cocoon. Now it is emerging again – this time in the form of a cultural criticsm journal, an edited collection of writing and images: a platform for an international network of loosely connected artists, writers, and thinkers to share creative, critical, and analytical content that contributes to challenging and sustained discourse concerned with contemporary social, cultural, and artistic phenomena. The title derives from the object, a stopgap, which acts as a temporary way of dealing with a problem or satisfying a need. However, rather than ‘dealing’ with a problem – an approach that might suggest an isolated or conclusive, one-time encounter – the essays, musings, and visual content in the following pages are efforts to approach contemporary concerns from new angles, pose new questions, and put forth alternative readings. It is by no means intended to offer absolute answers or definitive solutions. In the face of an increasingly ‘eitheror’ mode of discourse, this journal highlights points of deep ambivalence and overlap – not to assuage complicity in networks of power or dissuade conflict, but as a commitment to the power of politics and aesthetics to reconceive and reconfigure given structures, norms, and ways of seeing, and in doing so, to paraphrase José Muñoz, allow us to imagine the world otherwise. Rather than being structured around a rigid theme that would impose arbitrary restrictions on contributors, this summer issue is organized by a collection of global perspectives that span Berlin, Germany; San Francisco, California;

London, UK; Mexico City, Mexico; Guangzhou, China; and New York City – as well as creative mediums: essays, poems, interviews, and visual content. In part, this international collection of contributors reflects the increasingly globalized character of contemporary society, and the art-system in particular. It is alongside these global networks and communities that we are seeing xenophobic nationalism on the rise; demogagues increasingly utilizing scare tactics to demonize and criminialize difference; and countries (like the United States, for example) anxiously attempting to secure their borders – both ideologically and geographically. In what ways do the current refugee crisis(es), mass immigration, and the instantaneous connectivity of the Internet and social media challenge and contest rigid conceptions of borders (around nations, nationality, and culture)? What role can art play in upholding cultural and local differences while contesting fantasies of the authentic and the exotic? How might the art-system actively resist imposing a universalized, homogeneous Western perspective while at the same time fostering a commitment to global aesthetic practices? This issue was conceived during my time as a Fellow at the Institute for Queer Theory (iQt) in Berlin, Germany during the summer of 2017. Thank you Wesleyan for awarding me the Summer Experience Grant that has made this all possible, Dr. Antke Engel for her mentorship and commitment to addressing conflict with care and nuance, and to all those who have contributed their time, energy, and thought to help me realize this inaugural issue. It’s my hope that stop.gap can continue to be a platform for my peers to share their thoughts, interests, concerns, and art. summer 2017 3

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(fig. 1 - previous page) Rowan Hyland, Oaxaca Haze, 2017 (fig. 2) Rowan Hyland, Loving, 2017 (fig. 3) Rowan Hyland, Pink Market, 2017

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(fig. 4) Rowan Hyland, Tall Trees, 2017 (fig. 5) Rowan Hyland, Looking Back (Still Here), 2017 (fig. 6 - following page) Rowan Hyland, Sky Swing, 2017

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MEMORIA ROBERTO QUADRA

In the third grade, I wrote my first piece. At least the first one I remember. Focusing on the mind of Wiley Coyote “Why do you chase your tale?” This was the first-time I realized I could write and make people Smile.

II. I would not consider myself a good or bad writer. I can push buttons And think thoughts at the same time. Sometimes. I can write and be understood. Sometimes I cannot even understand.

From an early age, I had a profound appreciation for writing and reading. My father always reminded me that our family came from a lineage of famous poets. My grandfather wrote and I have read a few pieces saved over the years. This was how I have connected with my grandfather after his passing – through his writings as well as some striking photos and beautiful hand painted artesanias for my Nana that I inherited after her passing. He fled to Costa Rica during the Nicaraguan civil war and only came to visit on a handful of occasions. From what I remember, he was a strong gentle man. He wrote his final poem to me on my birthday in April of 2003. I can imagine him writing it in his living room in Costa Rica in his indoor garden, light flooding from the skylight, by the stone room with the TV that played Hanna-Barbera Cartoons dubbed into Spanish. I feel blessed. Witnessing him left an impact on me that to this day I can only describe as a call to arms. His funeral was quiet and beautiful. It poured rain the entire time we were in Costa Rica. We were in a small metal boat and the lightning struck the river. My aunt ducked under a bench, clutching me and my brother and we prayed loudly. The storm swayed the trees from where the howler monkeys screeched at us. In fourth grade, I was asked to write a piece about my family. This was the first time that I remember being asked to write from my own experience, from my own history. I did not think anyone wanted me to share my story. I felt my story did not matter to anyone. I was not even familiar with the extent of the whole story (even to this day I am finding out new pieces to the puzzle). The story I told that year –passed down to me by my mom– was about my bisabuela. She was a bruja and practiced witchcraft which she kept secret in the basement of the house my grandfather built for my grandmother. Even though it was forbidden, my mom used to sneak to the door and watch her grandmother say incantations and perform rituals. When mama was caught, she would get chastised. On numerous occasions after her passing my great grandmother was witnessed in her full flesh in this house. I visited once and we were forbidden from going into the basement. The entire house emanated an energy. Doors would open without explanation. El sur es puro magia. Tragedia, lluvia, y magia. Mythic things happen there. Maybe it is fantasy I am writing. Maybe it is my history, my world I am trying to understand. After his funeral poetry became a quintessential part of my life and necessary to my survival. To communicate with what is beyond. 12 summer 2017

[AS I CLIMB THE STAIRS THEY DISAPPEAR BENEATH MY FEET] ROBERTO QUADRA

“Blue black… that’s the blackest you can be.” Fritz Walter Clay “…Like clouds in the background, they’re blue, it’s hard to tell just what love’s gonna do, as pretty as a picture, but like a star, you are so near to me girl but yet so far…” Like Clouds ¬- The Districts i. 3:00am, after the bars close I sprint anxiously into the darkness. V. moments after, out of breath, what the fuck are you doing? Your drunk dialed retaliations, like clockwork, predictable. Roaring in the background, when your cousin’s calling me. Never come back here again he begs me for you. Remembering someone’s face as Billie Holiday’s singing Fine and Mellow in television, black and white. Love is just like a faucet, It turns off and on… Can’t tell if it’s you or me. Our brown eyes smoking blueberry Splitarillos, everyday, zooming down the highway in Florida a while ago. Blue is the warmest color our Chevy engine burns. Zooming down the highway with the top down. Blue chariot in the pouring rain, Florida gray blue cloud leaking memory. Orlando Florida is still our color. We were drowning in our tears, crashing blue waves like on Cocoa Beach, summer 2017 13

which we never visited since we were too blue. Pleading with you please stop bleaching your skin, blues. ii. 100 mph on the freeway accelerating thrill-seeking as blue paint chips off grey. Future Silver Surfer chrome bleeding blue. You actually own this car. Young buck gotta fly ass whiiip! grey Chevy burning real heat. He tells me It was my mom’s. . . Resting in peace, she watches over us on the freeway. I keep wondering if, our blue hearts, [or blue heart emoji’s] spell blues or what. Your tone. Tears, on the phone tears. I can hear the drops falling like bombs off your face. Falling like magnets, we find momentary bliss in Texas, heavy monster truck bleeding heart Texas haven. Before the storm. Breathing Texas exhale. Imaging heavy breathing Texas orgasms after Texas. Are you becoming someone different? If I take my wife’s hand from my son’s head and pick him up and hold him in my arms, it will be painful for me to leave… Buddha says. iii. Not breathing in Frisco. The air stale in Frisco. Sardine can city serving toxic air blues. Mind blues. Widening Ocean endless, pacing around Mission and Market blues, solo. Solo blue. La lluvia hoy llora para el mundo, espejo blue. Every moment more crooked capitán policía blue. In my heart, still the potential of hero navy blue, returning to me. 14 summer 2017

Blue fantasia Azul. In my life, you have been a savior. When it rains it pours someone says, and I bite my tongue, because they totaled a car and god is totaling my life in slow motion. iv. Atlanta, Atlanta, fantasia Atlanta beauty. In peaches Georgia grows, blooming like crystal. Watching you reach a peak, manhood in engraved golden blue. In my dreams, I dream of you, but wake up the next morning alone. Blue hearts pounding blue blood together in my dreams. I have never been touched the way you touched me I wanted to give you everything for the way you made me feel. Light blue. Fine silk, light blue. Hot cement blue skies. Fry an egg blue skies. In the Summer, blue skies smiling on me. You make me feel cradle blue, innocent blue. Early memory, of blood stained light blue, the first time, flying, through the air I fell off my bike. v. you me sea blue, when it pours. Still swimming, in blue, immortal blue. i didn’t decide i was slave. summer 2017 15

OWEN CHRISTOPH

Sara Ahmed’s phenonemal text Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others is orientated towards the table; it becomes her central object of study, as the book’s cover – a photograph of Giancarlo Neri’s The Writer (1955), a 30-foot tall scale depiction of a chair and writing table – makes clear. Throughout the text Ahmed returns again and again to the (dining room, kitchen, writing) table as she expounds her vision of a queer phenomenology. She writes, “Furniture too is an orientation device, a way of directing life by deciding what we do with what and where, in the very gesture toward comfort, the promise of ‘that sinking feeling’” (168). As I read Queer Phenomenology, I could not help but draw lines between, placing alongside one another, Ahmed and the sculptor and installation artist, Mona Hatoum. On an identitarian level: Ahmed was born in the United Kingdoms to a white, English mother and a Pakistani father, and Hatoum was born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents – when she was exiled from Lebanon, Hatoum moved to London. Yet, their more profound relation is a shared interest in the politics of space (distance, borders, body), family, and furniture. Ahmed might suggest these shared orientations – the facing towards – in subject matter are (at least in part) the product 16 summer 2017

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Hatoum’s series of sculptural works, Domestic Sculptures, interrogate the politics of the domestic sphere through the monumental enlargement of kitchen equipment to furniturescale. For example, her work Daybed (2008) which is constructed from sheets of punctured steel is suggestive of a cheese grater – that object which might be said to “belong” in the kitchen. Monumental in scale, the otherwise mundane kitchen appliance becomes both psychically ominous and physically dangerous: sitting on Daybed, a cheese grater laid horizontally upon the ground, would be a painful experience – if not seriously harmful one – for the body. The title ‘daybed,’ refers to those pieces of furniture also known as, chaise lounges or fainting couches, and which are now recognizable as an art historical motif (read: trope) of the West. While European 18th and 19th century paintings most often depict a woman reclining in the nude upon the daybed (see Édouard Manet’s Olympia (1863)), Hatoum offers only the furniture itself – no longer a plush bed of pillows and blankets – and leaves us to imagine what it might be like to lay upon it. As an object we are orientated towards, Daybed comes into the horizon as an object-within-reach, yet

(fig.7) Mona Hatoum, Daybed, 2008

SHARED FURNITURE: SARA AHMED & MONA HATOUM

of what came before each’s arrival to London, as “mixed-race,” as women, though these lines certainly do not dictate their paths.

denies viewers a space of comfort, “the promise of ‘that sinking feeling.’” If one were to “sink” their body “into” the work they would be met with a deep, shooting pain. Read through a queer lens, we might understand these decisions as refusals – a refusal to depict the female figure, a refusal to offer comfort.

(fig.8) Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002

Another of Hatoum’s works in the series, Grater Divide (2002) might also be read as a refusal as it becomes a physical and visual obstacle within the gallery space. Grater Divide consists of three sheets of steel, each with a different plane for (cheese) shredding, that are connected and held up-right as though it were a folding screen. Originally from China, folding screens were

imported into Europe during the late MiddleAges and have come to be associated with privacy (especially in the context of women’s changing spaces). However, as a cheese grater, the holes of the panels allow the gaze to pass through, denying its capacity to act as a privacy screen. The work’s title performs a play on words that recalls and transforms “the Great Divide,” “Greater Divide” into “Grater Divide” as is fitting for the mock cheese grater. On the one hand, the Great Divide is often understood

to be the topographical division within the United States, or more generally as the socioeconomic gulf between “the haves” and “the have-nots,” or if we are to read it in relation to Hatoum’s biographical history, the border conflict between Israel and Palestine. Yet Grater Divide, not entirely opaque or insurmountable, as the cheese grater holes produce a semipermeability of the screen, undermines the rigidity of borders. Daybed and Grater Divide defy categorical identification not because they are totally strange forms, but because they are persistently, overly familiar: the forms resemble both interior domestic furniture (the daybed, the folding screen) and kitchen objects. Through her combinatory mash-up of familiar domestic objects, Hatoum destabilizes and queers the statusquo relations between object and viewer, public and private, and their gendered connotations. By enlarging cheese graters to a sculptural scale, Hatoum renders the mundane kitchen appliances as unrecognizable objects – at least momentarily – and, in this moment of confusion, viewers become disorientated, a “vital” (fig. 8) sensation Ahmed describes as having the potential to “shatter one’s sense of confidence in the ground or one’s belief that the ground on which we reside can support the actions that make a life feel livable” (157). It it in such a moment that new directions and lines become possible, though not guaranteed nor without hardship.

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MATERIALISM IN THE AGE OF COMMODIFIED AUTHENTICITY, WELLNESS, NEOLIBERALISM, AND THE REVOLUTIONARY SUBJECT TEXT BY BLAISE BAYNO-KREBS EDITED BY JACK SINGER

“[H]ealth is not simply a category of worth; it can function as well as an ideology that produces norms and exclusions and creates hierarchies of worthiness.” Regina Kunzel, Sex, Panic, Psychiatry in The War on Sex (241)

It does not take the most astute cultural critic to notice the proliferation of wellness related products, practices, and professions that permeate the Western social and culture marketplace. In major urban centers, health food stores and niche fitness centers have moved from the infrequent to the commonplace. Articles saturate online platforms denouncing once coveted foods in favor of more natural, organic, or “authentic” alternatives. Without surprise, one scrolls through an Instagram feed, quickly darting past friends triumphantly standing outside SoulCycle studios smiling through sweaty superiority, muscles tingling with moral satisfaction. Health makes no stranger of the spiritual either. Dozens of meditation classes, seminars, and apps fill the need for psychological well-being under late capitalism’s insistence upon not only productivity, but also fulfillment. An equally obvious cultural trend is the recent wealth of Leftist discursive practices aimed to fashion the “progressive” individual into 18 summer 2017

the proper revolutionary subject. Derived from the second wave feminist mantra “the personal is political” contemporary activist groups emphasize the degree to which personal behavior and language are politically significant and have the power to shape larger scale political and ideological realities. While this political orientation may be useful, under neoliberalism’s ideological influence it has warped the Leftist political imagination and has effectively brushed materialist and structural analysis under the proverbial rug. Rather than allowing for discursive nuance, online Leftist communities such as those on Tumblr and “Leftbook” hold onto hierarchies of oppression that denounce “inauthentic” identities and forms of struggle. This essay seeks to both critique neoliberal wellness culture’s attachment to the fantasy of authenticity through the commodity form, as well as to draw attention to the ideological overlaps between wellness culture and the moralizing individualism of the contemporary Left. By highlighting the similarities between these two seemingly opposed ideologies, I hope to inspire a newfound materialist basis for political work on the Left. What is neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism differs from the liberalism of yore in its avowal of the free market and its logic as a generalizable epistemological framework. As such, neoliberalism, sees competition as the defining characteristic of

human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. (George Monibot, The Guardian)

Indeed, neoliberalism embraces the logic of capital and uses it as a lens through which all interaction can be, and is, viewed, “including the whole of the social system not usually conducted through or sanctioned by monetary exchanges” (Foucault, 243). Under the neoliberal methodological framework, every relationship, including and especially the relationship between consuming subject and themself, “can be analyzed in terms of investment, capital costs, and profit” (244). If I invest time in my relationships, school, the food I consume, my profit will be measured in happiness. Deeply embedded in the public psyche, statements like this one are entirely unremarkable, unrecognizable as an ideology. In addition to utilizing the general definition of neoliberalism, I emphasize three main components of neoliberalism that specifically pertain to wellness culture and Left discursive practices. These three are deeply interrelated and do not exhaust neoliberalism’s definition, but are necessary for neoliberal functionality. The three components are: 1. neoliberalism’s individualization/privatization of structural problems, 2. neoliberalism’s search for the culturally/socially “authentic”, and 3. neoliberalism’s propagation of guilt and inadequacy in order to serve its ideological partner, capitalism. INDIVIDUALIZATION There is quite a lot to feel unwell about in the age of global capitalism. Physical illness as a result of toxic leakages, poisonous and unhealthy food, or the biological impacts of stress, combined with psychological disrepair as a result of economic insecurity, social isolation, and political injustice make for a superbly sick social body. It is unsurprising

then, that a market has evolved and flourished in order to heal and make well. However, the neoliberal wellness market has obfuscated the fundamental, structural causes for our malaise and melancholy, and has instead promised a solution through the individual consumer that services capital. Wellness culture identifies the problem and its solution within the subject. If you feel depressed, you are not exercising or eating well enough, if you are stressed you just haven’t tried meditation. Therefore, when the subject does not achieve wellness or happiness, the fault is the subject’s and the subject’s alone. The most generous neoliberal interpretation, that of “mental illness” in which uncontrollable chemical imbalances determine despair, still presents market solutions to suffering that is bounded within an individual. You are alone with your “illness,” nobody is to blame, but you the individual must take steps to help yourself. Because the supposed solutions-as-commodities are on the market, the subject has no alternative but to participate in the wellness economy and to hope for a return on their investment. If, perhaps, these wellness products do not work as advertised, the blame is shifted onto the consumer for their lack of commitment or positivity, or onto their hardwired neurology. In Scott McLemee’s review of The Wellness Syndrome, he succinctly states, “[f]ailure to stay healthy and happy -- and flexible enough to adapt to whatever circumstances the labor market may throw at you -- is ultimately a personal and moral failure.” On a macro scale, the global political climate is suffering its own un-wellness. Governments worldwide have tilted towards the Right, and economic inequality has only increased with time. Racism and sexism have not subdued, and the leader of the United States is the perfect yet unimaginable mix of neoliberal economics and neoconservative social policy. The response from the Left has been vocal yet unimpressive due to neoliberalism’s capacity to summer 2017 19

both appropriate radical responses and generate seemingly radical praxis that fails to escape the horizon of neoliberal epistemology, smothering emancipatory movements. Gone are the powerful unions of the mid-century, and here to stay is the fragmented, performative, and internet based Left. Like those of wellness culture, discursive practices within Leftist communities follow an individualizing rhetoric, all the while touting solidarity and community. Indeed, Mark Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire Castle” bemoans the contemporary Left’s tendency to “individualize and privatize everything.” Under this communitarian guise, online solidarity forums ban members for using incorrect language, or even for asking incorrect questions. To educate oneself is the primary pedagogical mode, otherwise one is publicly shamed for their linguistic misstep. In other words, in order to cultivate a radical self, one has to enter a certain market of ideas by individually venturing into Left theory and crossing ones fingers in hope that this venture will lead to an authentically revolutionary subject and not a ban. Absent from these practices is an awareness of the ways in which those protected identities and other forms of subjective interpellation that Leftist discursive practices seek to defend are themselves categories of domination created by the capitalist material conditions, including those that rely on, for example, racial or sexual hierarchies, for their reproduction as irreducible to class position. Indeed, “there are no subjects except by and for their subjection” (Althusser, 182). Fisher elaborates on this materialist Marxist notion and writes that the contemporary individualizing Left “was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other.” Rather than recognize the ways in which ideological structures create and dominate marginalized identities, contemporary Leftist discourse focuses on affirming these identities militantly to the point of political ineffectivity. 20 summer 2017

Neoliberalism’s tendency to individualize must be overcome if the Left hopes to avoid functioning like the market. SEEKING AUTHENTICITY Wellness products frequently include rhetorical gestures towards a pre-ideological, “authentic” reality that has been tainted by technological advancement and chemical additives. The impositions to eat “real” food and to discover the “real” you rest upon the supposition that the current brand of yogurt one prefers is not food at all and that the way one interacts with society is an elaborate charade. Such a search for the authentic has adverse political implications, such as the romanticization and fetishization of so-called “primitive” or “simple” cultures as representations of the truthful subjectivity. In fact, much of wellness culture’s language and technology is directly borrowed from Eastern medicine, a borrowing which contributes to wellness culture’s Orientalist gaze. Moreover, this fetishization of authenticity attempts to overcome the reality of commodity fetishism. Coined by Marx, commodity fetishism refers to the mystical quality that products take on once they are removed and alienated from the labor which produces them. “The form of wood, for instance, is altered if a table is made out of it. Nevertheless the table continues to be wood, an ordinary, sensuous thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness” (Marx, Capital 163). Marx describes the way commodities operate within capitalism. Consumers and producers of wellness commodities seem to operate under the illusion that such commodities transcend commodity fetishism and instead reside in the realm of the “authentic”, pre-capitalist, use-only, “natural” world. Of course, this remains false. Wellness products and organic food are arguably imbued with even more ideological fantasy than their synthetic mid-century counterparts. Under neoliberalism, what constitutes a commodity has shifted from an object as such, to

experiences and lifestyles: What we are witnessing today is the direct commodification of our experiences themselves: what we are buying on the market is fewer and fewer products (material objects) that we want to own, and more and more life experiences – experiences of sex, eating, communicating, cultural consumption, participating in a lifestyle... (Zizek, 2014)

Wellness does not escape the grasp of the commodity, rather, it creates new and less materially locatable ones in the form of lifestyles, and attempts to subvert it by embedding a critique of the commodity form into the commodity itself. The use of authenticity in Leftist communities operates in a slightly more clandestine way, however, it infiltrates identity-based discourses and intra-community practices. Where there is room for some identity fluidity, there are also strict methods of essentialization in place, as well as social/political capital to be gained for identity authenticity. Indeed, the validity of political commentary is often determined by the level of authenticity of subjective experience based on identitarian categories. Those whose experiences are perceived as “authentic” accumulate social and political capital. This accumulation creates hierarchies of oppression and effectively reifies structures of oppression the Left seeks to eradicate. Identities then function like commodities within a market selling authenticity. The more identities one “owns,” the more one has power as the fantastical revolutionary subject. Not only does this position put the burden of a revolution squarely on those most oppressed within capitalism to bear alone since it reads them as the only pure revolutionary subjects, this framework also effectively dilutes the possibility for material transformation. This is not to say that subject positions should be disregarded entirely, they are assuredly historical materialist realities, but I wish to emphasize the degree to which historical/materialist analysis is

required. We must either avoid carte blanche essentialization and condemnation or face a more fragmented politic and inefficient praxis that mirrors neoliberal logic. MORALIZING The consequence of the overvaluation of authenticity is the imposition of a moral code predicated upon adhering to these authentic modes of consumption or comportment. For the wellness industry, moralizing takes the form of guilt and conspicuous consumption, and codifies those in lower socio-economic positions as morally bankrupt. Jason Tebbe compares modern day wellness culture to 19th century bourgeois morality; today’s version differs only in a preference for expensive meditation retreats and gym memberships rather than for disciplined social behavior and exemplary petticoats. Current exercise trends, like hot yoga, spin, and CrossFit, all demonstrate a commitment to selfdenial and self-discipline, values much praised by the Victorians. Marathon running has become the ultimate signifier: competitors can post photos on social media to prove to everyone that they have tortured their bodies in a highly virtuous — and not at all kinky — fashion. (Tebbe, 2016)

The virtues of wellness, inextricably linked to financial stability, work to further marginalize the lower classes by marking them as unclean, lazy or undisciplined. Because of this association of un-wellness with the poor, those of various classes may feel guilt-ridden obligation to be read as responsible self-caring individuals. This guilt serves the production of wellness related commodities and services. Moralizing and guilt are also of primary importance to the functioning of online Leftist rhetorical spaces. Related to the previous “authenticity” category, moralizing follows the necessitation of identity amassment and legitimization. Those without the proper/ summer 2017 21

“authentic” identities are morally castigated and left with feelings of shame. In Leif Weatherby’s review of Angel Nagle’s book Kill All Normies, a book assessing the opposing styles of Left and Right online communities, he writes, “[l] eft social media platforms nurtured a style of political commentary in which moral virtue became its own value. Once that system became clear, the struggle turned to amassing capital (and thereby denying it to others).” As such, those without the proper moral and identity based capital are berated and made guilty; “guilt and fear are omnipresent” (Fisher, 2013). This widespread guilt-mongering functions as an individualizing/responsibilizing tool that instills the notion that if only the revolutionary subject behaved correctly, if only our rhetoric was perfect, the world could be won. CONCLUSION What is there to be done to shift these counterproductive and ideologically upsetting practices? Why is it that the Left continuously falls victim to neoliberalism’s grasp? Without a proper analytical framework under which one may view ideological subject formation, the answers to these questions may never be uncovered. It is imperative to begin any analysis of subject-improvement with a historical materialist/structural analysis. In Louis Althusser’s seminal essay, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”, the antihumanist Marxist philosopher outlines the ways in which ideology produces subjects. This process is called interpellation; “all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, by the functioning of the category of the subject” (173). A methodology familiar to the social sciences and humanities, this process mirrors the way in which categorical identities are “socially constructed”; there is no pre-discursive identity, only the ideological interpellation of individuals as historically embedded subjects. As such, the insistence upon notions 22 summer 2017

of essentialized identity, or the accumulation of identities as commodities only provides ideology’s mechanisms of interpellation with more material to dominate. Indeed, under neoliberalism, the more that identities function like commodities, the more that the market can create commodities for these identities, a process that spirals out of control. This process is already at work in the once innocent notion of wellness oriented living. The culture is fully embraced by the market, stripping away the revolutionary potential of caring for oneself under capitalism. Once this perversion takes place, it is difficult to reverse. For the Left, one must question the ways that ideology interpellates subjects and allows their material conditions to produce their behavior. One cannot place the entire responsibility on the individual subject, the analysis must carefully include the historical realities of identity production, as well as the preset day ideologies which skew Leftist discourse into another neoliberal individualizing, essentializing trap. Moreover, the horizon of left theory/practice cannot be identity, and if it is identity, this focus reproduces the kinds of racist/sexist/ queerphobic discursive and material practices that we Leftists claim as fundamental enemies. The only real way out of these deadlocks is to understand identities as products of material circumstances and to think critically about what justice actually looks like. Is justice simply, to be recognized by the bourgeois big Other? Or is the search for justice fundamentally economic, not in the reductionist sense, but in the sense that oppression’s impact is the economic disenfranchisement of the many in order to reproduce a system that, in varying degrees, disenfranchises everyone. It may very well be possible that the particular struggle for liberation is a struggle for economic conditions that render these identities and their subjection obsolete. These ideal economic conditions will necessarily create new identities, therefore, we cannot be tied dogmatically to them as if they are the only thing we are fighting for…

(fig. 9) Alex Pabarcius, Sheath, 2017 (fig. 10 - following page) Alex Pabarcius, Hunger, 2017

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(fig. 11) Alex Pabarcius, Armor piece, 2017

(fig. 12) Alex Pabarcius, Sailor Jack, 2017

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CULTURAL PROPERTY & CENSORSHIP AT THE 2016 WHITNEY BIENNIAL OWEN CHRISTOPH

Since the opening of the 2017 Whitney Biennial in mid-March, one controversial work has dominated the art world news – for better or for worse – and, as a result, has also become a site of a tremendous and generative discourse. The controversy and its ensuing debate has been largely framed as: “Can a white artist represent the suffering of black bodies and experience?” Though this is a question I am certainly interested in exploring (and will, below), I also reflect on other discursive tributaries that have received little to no critical attention; such as, cultural property, the violence of representation, and the limits and potential of censorship.

along racialized, gendered, and classed axes and her painting was met with harsh criticism. A protest was staged in front of the painting by the artist Parker Bright; the black, Britishborn artist, Hannah Black, wrote an open letter to the curators of the Biennial calling for the work to be removed and destroyed; and art and mainstream media published dozens of critical think-pieces.

As an avid lover of contemporary art, I read the torrent of articles published by artists, art historians, curators, critics, and the general public as they flooded my social media newsfeeds one after another. Each new article seemed to surface greater nuance, and poke compelling holes in the previous argument. Immersed in a cacophony of articles, I was unwilling to commit myself to any “side” or The work being called to the stand is by the shore up my opinion until I had seen the piece, white, female artist Dana Schutz’s Open Casket and the whole of the Whitney Biennial, in (2016), a larger-than-life abstract painting that person myself. When I went, a month after its depicts Emmett Till as he lays disfigured in a opening, a large crowd was gathered around coffin. As a brief, yet necessary, background: in the painting. Not only were they a spectacle of 1955, Till, a 14-year-old black boy, was brutally themselves, they were gawking at, in the words murdered by two white men after being accused written across the back of Parker Bright’s teeof making sexual advances on Carolyn Bryant, shirt, a “black death spectacle.” While I snuck a a white woman and one of the men’s wives. Till’s quick glance, for the most part I found myself mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, held an open casket avoiding the work in an act of my own (weak) funeral for her son, and allowed photographs of gesture of protest against Schutz’s domination his brutalized face and body to be published in over the many other works in the exhibition. Jet magazine, because “she wanted the world to Perhaps the best place to begin to untangle the see what those men had done to her son.” Till’s fast-paced discourse (which moved at a warpmurder and the photographs had an enormous speed only made possible by the Internet) is impact on both black and white Americans and with Black’s open letter to the curators of the is often considered a catalyst for the Civil Rights Whitney Biennial, Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Movement. The men were found not guilty in Locks – both of whom are Asian-American. court, in part due to Bryant’s testimony, which Calling for the removal and destruction of the in 2007, over 50 years later, she confessed had painting, Black’s letter purposefully shifted been falsified. In depicting Till, Schutz took critical analysis away from the formal qualities up a subject matter that is affectively loaded of Open Casket to consider the implications 28 summer 2017

and quandaries that emerge at the intersections of racial identity and subject matter. Black and the letter’s co-signatories assert that Schutz is taking part in the long history of white supremacy “transmuting Black suffering into profit and fun.” America’s history of public lynching and the constant barrage of modern, dominantly white-run and owned, media’s portrayals of violence against people of color undeniably attest to the commodification and spectacularization of Black trauma. Though not quite the same case, this reality necessitates a diligent attention to the complex and nuanced politics of white representation of black bodies, particularly victimized ones. By and large, for both her critics and those who came to her defense, Schutz failed to do so. Why did Schutz choose to depict a brutalized black body? While Black claims it was for economic reasons, Schutz justifies her decision on the basis of a shared, motherly empathy with Till-Mobley. However, in “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance,” bell hooks (1992: 366) suggests that progressive whites have come to seek contact with the racialized Other because it offers “a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal…” This desire for contact with the Other is not limited just to Schutz, but includes the largely white art world, which is always seeking something “different.” While it may be a stretch to say that nobody cares about seeing yet another portrait of a white person (as we continue to see so many), the supply excess of art portraying white subjects and subjectivity has made it mundane. Within this relatively recently reoriented cultural space, the black subject and black subject matter has become increasingly sought after by the art world. Kerry James Marshall’s immense traveling retrospective, Mastry, and the Whitney Biennial itself, is indicative of this. In her letter, Black writes, “blackness is hot right now…,” demonstrating that she is keenly aware of this turn – an awareness which may contribute to her suspicion of and accusation against Schutz of instrumentalizing the black

body for attention and profit. Now that the representation and subjectivity of black people is in demand, Black seems to stake a claim that it should be coming from Black, not white people. Many critics have countered Black’s claim in the specific case of Schutz, and not just on the basis that the painting was, “not for sale and never will be,” according to a Washington Post (Gibson: 2017) interview with Schutz. In her extensive response, “Censorship, Not the Painting, Must Go,” published on Hyperallergic five days after Black’s letter, the black, female artist, Coco Fusco, tears apart Black’s open letter, line by line. Concerning Schutz’s alleged commodification of black trauma, Fusco writes that Black expounds “an economically reductionist view of artistic practice.” She also argues that Black artists have also benefit from the commodification of Black trauma – though acknowledging it certainly carries a different weight when a white woman profits from the death of a black boy at the hands of another white woman. While describing the commodification of blackness as her argument “in brief,” Black’s central argument seems to really come in the following paragraph: “…stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s…” This claim – that black subject matter is off limits to non-Black artists – and her repeated call: “the painting must go,” is what seems to have stirred so many critics. Fusco suggests that Black “relies on problematic notions of cultural property,” while New York Times art critic, Robert Smith (2017) asks, “Who owns [hateful, corrosive white racism]?” Smith seems to echo James Baldwin’s oft-cited quote from his posthumously published book, Remember This House (1987), in which he said, “The history of America is the history of the Negro in America. And it’s not a pretty picture.” If this is true, and I would argue that it is, then Black’s claim that Till’s death is solely black people’s subject matter, becomes muddled. summer 2017 29

Black’s letter and Fusco’s critique of ‘cultural property’ raises again the much debated questions around cultural appropriation: Who can represent what? Can and should culture andcan represent what? Can and should culture and imagery be owned? What informs the standards of acceptable ownership? In her essay, “Where Have All the Natives Gone?” Rey Chow (1996: 126) suggests that these questions provoke a search for authenticity and purity that rely on a politics of images. Black’s stance on the matter is abundantly clear: “the subject matter is not Schutz’s…The painting must go.” For Black, Open Casket is an inappropriate appropriation of a subject matter that is off limits to Schutz and other white artists, because they cannot embody nor relate, and should therefore not represent, Black subjectivity. Whether Schutz is claiming to do this is debatable; however, there are certainly no clear markers that the painting is coming from a white woman as the perspective simply stares down at Till’s distorted face. As a result, the painting seemingly universalizes and neutralizes viewers, failing to highlight or problematize the politics of viewership. Fusco upholds Danny Lyon’s photographs of police violence against black Civil Rights activists as an example of a white artist using black bodies to make anti-racist work. She argues that “there are better ways to arrive at cultural equity than policing art production and resorting to moralistic pieties in order to intimidate individuals into silence.” That said, if Open Casket was Schutz’s attempt at representing white shame and guilt, by abstracting the photograph of Till’s brutalized black body and providing no trace of her own positionality and complicity, then as Black notes, “this shame is not correctly represented.” Black’s statement suggests that, while Schutz fails to do so, there is a correct way to represent white guilt. Perhaps one that situates white bodies in states of complicity, highlights whiteness as a non-neutral category, and leaves out re-presentations of violence against non-white bodies. Rather than using “Black 30 summer 2017

pain as a raw material,” white artists should be interrogating whiteness through their own bodies. The call for a study of whiteness within academia posits an alternative mode of engaging with questions of race. One which Sara Ahmed (2004) describes as “deeply invested in producing anti-racist forms of knowledge and pedagogy.” However, this differs from Black’s call for artists to stick to what they know, delineated along identity categories -- instead it offers the opportunity for white bodies and whitness itself to become the object of analysis rather than Black bodies and trauma. Though she does not say it explicitly, lying silently beneath Black’s letter is an assertion and a claim on the Real – that there is an authentic, true, Black experience. As a white woman, by Black’s standards, that authentic experience is out of reach for Schutz, and she is unable to represent it and “must accept that [she] will never embody and cannot understand.” Critics, including Fusco, note and contest Black’s assertion of a monolithic Black experience and voice, pointing to the limitations of a politics grounded in authenticity and representation. In “The Precession of Simulacra,” Jean Baudrillard (1981: 5) writes, “One can live with the idea of distorted truth. But…[not] the idea that the image [doesn’t] conceal anything at all.” Baudrillard’s theorization of the simulacrum problematizes Black’s insinuation that a black artist would be able to ethically represent the authentic experience of Black subject matter. Yet, what constitutes the Real Black experience? Some might and many do argue it is one of marginalization, oppression, and violence; however, as the caption to an Instagram post the black, female artist, Kara Walker, writes, “I am more than a woman, more than the descendent of Africa, more than my fathers [sic] daughter. More than black more than the sum of my experiences thus far.” How might anyone attempt to represent an experience outside of their own? Should they? In “Venus in Two Acts,” contemplating the ethics of historical

representation, Saidiya Hartman (2008: 3-4) asks, “what do stories afford anyway?... Why subject the dead to new dangers and to a second order of violence?” She tentatively answers that it offers us an opportunity to understand the history of the present and produce an anticipated future. Josephine Livingstone and Lovia Gyarkye (2017), too, uphold the power of the Real in their co-written article, “The Case Against Dana Schutz.” They write, “Where the photographs stood for a plain and universal photographic truth, Schutz has blurred the reality of Till’s death, infusing it with subjectivity.” Livingstone and Gyarkye claim that the bare act of this translation is an act of violence, acknowledging a distinction between the formal and affective qualities of photographs and paintings. Yet, while Livingstone and Gyarkye critique Schutz’s abstraction of Till, the aesthetic debates of the 20th century thoroughly problematized figurative/realistic as well. In its wake, a realistic rendering of Till by Schutz would not only be read as redundant, but arguably more – not less – violent in its adherence to a mythologized notion of true representation. The black-andwhite photographs of Till are gut-wrenching: the young boy’s face is disfigured to the point of abstraction, the pain of the image heightened by a disbelief at the utter distortion of Till’s face as it butts up against the sheer, undeniable fact of photographic documentation. In “Photojournalism and Human Rights,” Susie Linfield (2010:39) acknowledges and reiterates: “photographs bring home to us the reality of physical suffering with a literalness and an irrefutability that neither literature nor painting can claim.” Despite this unique ability to represent, photographs are not neutral arbitrators of Truth – they too are the product of the photographer’s subjectivity, as they determine framing, lighting, and the precise moment that they capture. Livingstone and Gyarkye also object to Schutz “infusing [Till’s death] with subjectivity,” yet

offer no reason as to why this is problematic. However, turning again to Rey Chow’s “Where Have All the Natives Gone?,” we find a possible explanation. Chow (1996:127) writes, “the problem with the reinvention of subjectivity as such is that it tries to combat the politics of the image, a politics that is conducted on surfaces, by a politics of depth, hidden truths, and inner voices.” Chow (1996:146) argues that re-presenting the defiled image of the native with a subjectivity that they are presumed to lack or have been denied, is simply subjecting them to the violence of representation a second time, as “defilement and sanctification belong to the same symbolic order.” Schutz subjects Till to a second order of violence, yet she fails, in the spirit of Saidiya Hartman, to infuse Open Casket with the imagining of a future to come. It is for this reason – namely, that the work is simply unnecessary and lackluster – that so many have objected to Schutz’s use of traumatic black subject matter. What has her work done beyond the simple invocation of brutalized black bodies? Some argue that it has brought about a generative discourse; however, was it Schutz or Bright and Black? And, to whose benefit and whose expense has it been? While the potential delimitation of cultural property along identity categories raises questions regarding (in)appropriate appropriation, the Real, and the violence of representation, it also arouses critics’ anxieties around the vehemently American right to the freedom of speech as a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Though many of Black’s supporters attempt to temper her words, she is clear in her letter that “the painting be removed…and destroyed.” Both Fusco and Smith, invoking historical accounts associating censorship with authoritarian regimes and religious fundamentalists, categorically denounce censorship as dangerous and an attack on free speech as a civil liberty. Though charged with a historical ignorance, Black, is not utterly summer 2017 31

unaware of these associations, and asserts that “white free speech and white creative freedom are founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights.” Black explicitly calls for the censorship of Schutz on the basis of a racialized delineation between the differential use and impact of free speech. In this case, Schutz’s freedom of speech has taken the form of abstracting Till’s brutalized face and come at the expense of subjecting Black people to “unnecessary hurt,” according to Black. For many though, hurt does not justify censorship. In fact, quoting Adorno’s writing on Schoenberg’s 1946 cantata, Linfield suggests, hurt is inevitable when addressing painful subject mater: “victims are turned into works of art…The unthinkable… becomes transfigured, something of its horror removed. By this alone an injustice is done the victims, yet no art that avoided the victims could stand up to the demands of justice.” Fusco extrapolates that calls for censorship gesture towards “a very dark path,” insinuating that censorship can easily transform into a broad precedent – legal or otherwise – that can be (and historically has been) used to silence minoritized subjects as well as to eliminate arts funding. Other critics suggest that it is precisely Schutz’s and protestors’ freedom of speech that has given rise to so much valuable discourse. In her Instagram post, Kara Walker (2017) wrote, “a lot of art often lasts longer than the controversies that greet it… Perhaps it too gives rise to deeper inquiries and better art. It can only do this when it is seen.” Smith champions artists’ ability and will to bring difficult, complex, and painful issues to the public sphere. Fusco provides numerous examples of violently traumatic images role in catalyzing social change. Walker suggests work, good or bad, problematic or otherwise, should be seen. All of their language relies upon a fundamental commitment to the value of exposure and discourse, regardless of content. This commitment presumes both that the subject matter is hidden or otherwise unknown by the public, and that its unseen 32 summer 2017

status is what maintains its perpetuation. If only white people knew about racism, knew about racialized police violence, knew about white supremacy, then it would stop. hooks counters this utopian vision in “Eating the Other” by suggesting that “the desire to make contact with those bodies deemed Other, with no apparent will to dominate, assuages the guilt of the past, even takes the form of a defiant gesture where one denies accountability and historical connection.” This closely resembles the trajectory from which the self-effacing, progressive, white liberal class has emerged, and yet many would argue that their racism and oppressive domination is simply more masked and, for that reason, insidious. Moreover, the valorization of the public sphere and its discourse aggrandizes the Social: people should be interacting with one another, talking with those that they don’t know, demonstrating a commitment to the greater good of society through rigorous and considered debate. Instead, Leo Bersani argues that the Social is intertwined within a system that seeks to transform people into known, identifiable, legible subjects. Though offering a politically compelling mode of encountering the Other, Bersani’s anti-social thesis does not seem to adequately account for the compounding force of historically asymmetrical power imbalances. Why is it now, after 400-years of slavery and subjection of black people, that we should all just be concerned with ourselves? In their frantic scramble to defend the freedom of speech, critics skip over Black’s nuance and specification that it is “white free speech and white creative freedom” that has “been founded on the constraint of others” and for whom “are not natural rights.” Instead, they universalize her call to censorship as a dangerous endeavor as it makes the ability to express oneself vulnerable to the whim of those in power. Yet, is this not already the case in our democratic state? The neoliberal state says, “Speak, speak! For no one will hear you and nothing will

change.” The 2017 Whitney Biennial collapses temporal space and highlights the failures of a progressive narrative of change through the clear resonances between Schutz’s painting of a black boy who was victim to racialized violence in 1955, and two floors up, Henry Taylor’s painting, THE TIMES THAY AIN’T A CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH!! (2017), which depicts the face of a black man murdered by a white police officer in 2017. Recently, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and protests, debates around free speech have been reignited, particularly on college campuses – Mizzou, Yale, and Wesleyan amongst them. The debate has centered not around the censorship of protestors’ freedom of speech, but the censorship of speech that is found to perpetuate racist or otherwise problematic language. Wesleyan activists, similar to many of Black’s supporters (though contrary to her own words), do not claim to promote censorship, but argue they are utilizing their own freedom of speech to say, “We will not accept the violence of racist language.” Claiming the act of censorship is a cultural taboo that has been produced by progressive liberal ideology which views any limitation on free speech (as with the freedom of the market) to be an inherent ill as it harms the health of democracy. A fantasy of equal access and platform underlies the notion that public discourse will inevitably produce the best, correct answer. The time I saved not looking at Open Casket, I spent in the room directly next door, that was almost solely occupied by Censorship Now!! (2017), Frances Stark’s series of eight monumental paintings. Against the canvas’ creamy, off-white background, the eight paintings altogether depicted the cover page and twelve pages of an annotated version of Ian F. Svenonius’ provocative text of the same name as though the book was laying flat open. Stars, exclamation points, underlines dripping red like blood, and faux graphite markings litter the pages, directing viewers’ attention to

certain passages of the raging and polemical text (2015: 13) which calls for “censorship until reeducation: ban//burn//abolish,” closely echoing Black’s demands. Whether an intentional curatorial decision or not, the close proximity of Stark’s series to Open Casket seems to preemptively anticipate the emergent controversy – though little critical attention has been paid to their dialectally antagonistic relationship. In a direct appropriation of Svenonius’ raging book (2015), Censorship Now!!, Stark has meticulously copied the pages of the first chapter, which utilize conservative language and methodology to target the mainstream media and the state, rather than the usual subcultural targets. The first page reads: “We need censorship… Censorship of the arts, whose special status of immunity from culpability explains and excuses the degenerate ideology that makes all this ‘freedom’ possible. Indeed, of all the systems which require suppression and purging, we start with the arts. Art is the linchpin. Seemingly inconsequential, ‘freedom of creative expression’ is a red herring; a beard, a ploy, a false-flag operation.” For Svenonius, the lack of censorship of the arts is indicative of its powerlessness under the state, arguing that to be a “dangerous substance [it] must be regulated at all costs.” And advocates that it is against an overt censorship that art must struggle, rather than the silent subjection and exclusion of capitalist, free-market ideology. An ideology which champions free speech so that it might continue to determine who is given the platform to be amplified within an infinite sea of voices. Svenonius’ hyperbolic tone which gives viewers pause to consider whether he is serious or not remains an unanswered question. Similarly, Stark’s monumentalizing of the text and its inclusion within the Biennial overtly contradicts the call for censorship while promoting it. Its inclusion is the antithesis of the book, what Svenonius might perceive as the summer 2017 33

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(art) market’s desire to absorb and undermine his revolutionary call. Yet, try as it might, Svenonius á la Stark, has put to the public sphere: What is the value of censorship? What constitutes and defines it? How is it enforced? Should it be enforced? By whom and against what? Progressive liberals, the champions of equality hat they are, emphatically denounce censorship across the board. On the other hand, noting the historical applications of free speech by white people, Black’s letter suggests censorship should be directed towards racist and problematic expression that comes at the expense of Black pain. For Svenonius, censorship is an 34 summer 2017

acknowledgement (and fear) of the power of art, that what one has to say or create might actually make a change, and in fact, creates the opportunity for art to truly struggle and share its message. And, this is what we see in the aftermath of Black’s call for the removal and destruction of Open Casket as the work has gotten far more attention than it otherwise would have.

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(fig. 13) Frances Stark, Censorship Now!! (cover page), 2017 (fig. 14) Frances Stark, Censorship Now!! (p. 15), 2017 (fig. 15) Frances Stark, Censorship Now!! (p. 20-21), 2017 (fig. 16) Frances Stark, Censorship Now!! (p. 22-23), 2017 (fig. 16)

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MUMBLE RAPTURE CHRISTIAN BLACK

Rap’s relevance is positioned in perpetual nostalgia. Hip hop has persistently grown in popularity from its inception, overshadowing and enveloping its formal predecessors most visibly through ‘sampling’. Sampling is part of a DJ’s work and, while DJing is one of the pillars of hip hop, it is often grouped with rapping to create ‘hip hop music.’ Rapping, the practice of an emcee, seems to be always coming out of a golden era. This phenomenon is most viciously perpetuated by the ‘Old Head’. (n. “[Old Heads] often form cliques of their own and try and school youngin’s on how things used to be back in their day. A scene-specific ‘senior citizen,’ for all intents and purposes, in activities that would kill normal seniors citizens.”) The worst of Old Heads in hip hop use the echoes of their era of popularity to curate what they believe hip hop ‘should’ be, limiting its growth. Often finding itself tangled in the funny glances of artists-turned-judges is a new emergence of emceeing, mumble rap. The rapper that coined the term ‘mumble rap’, though including ‘rap’ in the title, explained it as being the result of younger artists that “don’t rap” before explaining, “It’s cool for now; it’s going to evolve.” This enigma of not being able to describe the newer method of riding a beat as anything but rap forces the listener to consider that mumble rap may be one of the most substantial expansions of rap since its beginnings. Similarly, scat singing was a widely-contested practice of vocal improvisation in which syllables were used instead of words, often in collaboration with a band. Scat can be traced to 36 summer 2017

the early 20th century (and beyond), treating the voice as an instrument with both rhythmic and melodic improvisatory qualities. In the New Orleans’ jazz scene, where it is said jazz ‘originated’ (though its African aspects and Blues qualities are examples of its origins being much less concrete), the adage was noted, “if you can’t sing it, you can’t play it.” Thus, the lines between instrumentalists and vocalists have long been thoroughly blurred. Ella Fitzgerald’s live performances of “How High the Moon” would usually include a reference, in scat, to Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology”. These distinctions of hip hop’s pillars are not so clear, rapping can easily be considered an extension of the beat, another instrument on the song. It seems the majority of negativity toward mumble rap comes from an obsession of lyric. Lyric obsession is born out of popularity being both toxic and intoxicating to hip hop, I do not mean that rappers spitting their own truths will inevitably begin to write lyrics unrepresentative of the hardships they’ve come from once they’ve ‘made it’, nor do I mean consumers’ willingness to position rappers that are promoted through mass media over local rappers subtly enforces a universality to lyric that could never truly encapsulate the nuances of experience within a community, rather, I mean hip hop has always felt tied to ‘message’ and because the audience of hip hop continues to peak every day, Old Heads are worried that their original message (that expanded the audience in the first place) is being lost by new rappers reaping the benefit of last generation’s work. In other words, they are not making the most of the stage of ‘voice’ that many have died to offer. This broad negativity seems to neglect consideration that a ‘message’ can easily be sent without use of English (or any widely used language for that matter). A voice does not begin in words. Long before lyric was placed at the forefront, black music consisted of musical artists in the early 20th century that wailed through their instruments and, without words, managed to convey a wide variety of messages through different energies,

feelings, and textures all seemingly threaded by their liveliness. Furthermore, on American plantations, drums were such an effective method of communication amongst slaves, they could be used as a call to action, and were often confiscated because slave masters felt it was too dangerous to have revolution at the fingertips of their captured. Within hip hop, even to this day, freestyling has been a way to determine the talent of an emcee, ‘writtens’ were often thought of as a crutch. The expectation in a freestyle is an immediacy with words while staying on beat, but a rapper could also try difficult (fast, lilting) flows where the emphasis is taken away from words. In either instance, this expectation of an ability to freestyle neglects words being at the forefront of emceeing and positions them, more comfortably, as percussive instruments through which a rapper navigates. I personally find this immediacy of language and energy more entertaining than energy curated, mastered, and over-produced in a studio where hip hop’s liveliness is often lost.

only does this method alleviate the multistep version of scatting and then choosing words like puzzle pieces to fit the rhythm, but it taps into the beauty of living immediacy and intimacy on a first take. Thelonious Monk often refused to do a recording more than three times under the pretenses that the mistakes made on the first few takes were a part of the song and that the musicians’ familiarity with a song would be the song’s ruin more so than so-called ‘errors’. Mumble rap is not inherently disposable, but, like any other platform, there will be bubblegum bullshit that presents itself as ‘mumble rap’. Although words are not a requirement for conveying a message, some artists simply say nothing. Allowing lifelessness to pass in any form is a dangerous task, but for now, it’s cool. It’s going to evolve.

Another potential benefit of mumble rap, if it continues to distance itself from language, would be the live shows. An emcee would not be limited to the flow of a song simply because the audience knows the words to it (or there could be a portion with words and a portion of scat-style-rhythmic improv), finally allowing the song to be a living, breathing, thing again (similar to the way a chart operates in jazz, allowing for derivation). It’s common practice in hip hop to first scat over a beat to get a gauge of the flow that the rapper will use on the song. Once the rhythm is understood in the rapper’s head, then words are used to place-fill the originally scatted rhythm. Various notable rappers that have been dragged into the judgmental ‘mumble’ conversation have articulated that if they feel an immediate attraction to the beat, they go into the booth without anything written and freestyle. Not summer 2017 37

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(fig. 17) Nadine Ng, Doctor Poon, 2017 (fig. 18) Nadine Ng, L Hotel, 2016

38â&#x20AC;&#x201A; summer 2017

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40â&#x20AC;&#x201A; summer 2017

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(fig. 19) Nadine Ng, Drgaon Center, 2017

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(fig. 20) Nadine Ng, 2:1, 2016

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42â&#x20AC;&#x201A; summer 2017

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(fig. 21) Nadine Ng, Slaughterhouse, 2016 (fig. 22) Nadine Ng, untitled, 2015

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SELECTED WORKS ZENO SCOTT

i can only hear my abuela in segments, yet still i add the wrong prepositions with myself and realize linguistic interference is tricky when you have but one tongue, but two ears that can only listen in reverse order

44â&#x20AC;&#x201A; summer 2017

i didn’t decide i was slave. BUT STILL i am working my way out the house with my masters monogrammed pistol and a pick axe i would’ve taught my masters sons to read with my milk i would’ve been baptized in the milk of my master i would’ve been hanging fruit. tantalizing my master my master could have me, though my master still has me, though and although I AM the beat the swing the swing the swing the lash of my palm against apentemma repenting the sins of my skin (waaaaaadde) in the water children try and wash their dirt skin or pull fire thru to tame the dreadful perhaps each kink will ascend THEN back to the scalp of OUR lamb woolen jesus OUR cotton gin jesus OUR melanite messiah dressed in the disguised hymns of OUR people summer 2017 45

ENCOUNTERING OUR SHADOW(S) MARY BLAISE TURGEON

There have been periods of time in my life when I was really struggling. What I felt was overwhelming, and it couldn’t express itself through my conscious self without being ensnared in my ego. I struggled to peer through myself into deeper awareness, and over these struggles I gained a greater objectivity regarding my experience. My experience is limited, but not meaningless. I recognized that if the deepest self is like a sun, then we are not equipped to look directly at it. Instead, we must face away, and what we see may appear to be shadow. This shadow is not us, but it indicates the way in which our selfawareness actually obstructs our true nature. That is to say, the darker aspects of yourself are the way in which you are naturally limited to express or know yourself: a blindspot cast by your ego. Nonetheless, this shadow is necessary, as it is the byproduct of the very self-awareness that allows you to have this beautiful experience. This experience which casts a shadow also throws rainbows; it breaks up the light in thrilling ways. We could not have this beautiful spectrum without obstruction. There is a deep part of ourselves which transcends our humanity, but in our human lifetime we must come to know it through our human senses. Our human senses may limit the cosmic infinity, but they nonetheless form a beautiful and meaningful picture. This picture is developed over time and space. By moving through time and space, as in growth, we are 46 summer 2017

able to transform our shadows so that we can piece together glimpses of our own infinite source with greater and greater clarity. The picture may, at times, strike some sense of dread; like a fearfully great beast. This monster is an extension of our experience. It, too, must be embraced. When I was struggling with my shadow back in late 2014, these are what came of my visual meditations. I started with the knowledge that the darkness was necessary to the light, as in the metaphorical growth of plants; the cycles of time as illustrated by the moon, and the experience of ‘luna’cy, are necessary to growth. Plants perform cellular respiration at night, when they consume the sugars that they produced by the light of day. We must persevere through apparent night and insanity before we can gain the clarity and wisdom of the daytime perspective. The day feels wonderful by comparison, but actually our appreciation of it requires our experience of the night. The broader and clearer perspective is only possible by piecing together the collection of our diverse experiences. Once I had created the first work at the end of that summer, the illustration of night and day and growth and time, I was prepared to go deeper into the dark. After that, I can’t actually remember which came first, and I think as winter drew close I worked on both simultaneously: the shadow and glory of the feathered/rainbow serpent (referenced in many mythologies, including Quetzalcoatl of Mesoamerica) and the illustration accompanied by words, which is meant to evoke the eagle nebula associated with the Serpens constellation (which contains the double star of Cor Serpentis, or Unukalhai). Those two images were born of my ongoing occult research and self-reflection, which

(fig. 23) Mary Blaise Turgeon, Alien, 2014

had brought me into association with the represented energies. Reflection on my own fearsome yet beautiful destructive/creative power is a natural association, as artists act as creators of their own worlds much as creator deities do. This process of integration helped me to simultaneously embrace and transcend my human self.

(fig. 23)

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A SILVER LINING REVIEW OF DOCUMENTA 14 I arrived in Kassel, Germany for documenta14 in the early morning on Wednesday, June 14th – just a few days after its opening on the 10th and the prominent artworld figures had scuttled off to Art Basel in Switzerland. After dropping my bag off at my hostel, I went in search of a map – a necessary (though woefully inadequate) tool for navigating the many venues scattered throughout the city. Next to the information pavilion where over-priced socks and totes were on sale, stood a large, faux-Parthenon, built from a scaffolding structure semi-encased by previously banned books, and which now stands on a former Nazi book burning site. The incomplete structure represents – with a blunt-like force – documenta14’s split exhibition structure (the first half in Athens and the second in Kassel), and – as I quickly realized – the exhibition’s informal, haphazard presentation and prescriptive, delineated themes. The splitsite format is part of Adam Szymczyk’s attempt to draw attention to nationality, borders, and the refugee crisis, as well as placing an emphasis on topical social issues, and making a clear effort to include a bevy of performance practices. Following the curator’s vision for the viewer’s route through documenta, I began my art meandering at the Neue Neue Galerie where the majority of newly commissioned works were housed. The sporadically missing artist labels and lack of clear direction through the space produced a feeling of disorientation that wasn’t obviously intentional on the part of the organizers; however, in the confusion, I came across a few works I’d like to linger on. 48 summer 2017

(fig. 24) Pope L., Skin Set Project (White People Are

DAY I:

(fig. 24)

Pile o’ Sámpi (2017) by the Norwegian artist, Máret Ánne Sara, consists of several parts: a 5-meter tall ‘curtain’ of animal skulls methodically strung together with wire; a custom-made leather neck-piece ornamented with its own hanging ‘curtain’ of miniature porcelain skulls; and finally, two light boxes illuminating images of piled animal heads. The first image, in sepia-tone, is a reproduction of a photograph from 1892, accompanied – on the nearby artist label – by the text: “Man stands on top of enormous pile of buffalo skulls; another man stands in front of pile with his foot resting on a buffalo skull…” The second image is a more recent photograph of the Norwegian flag flying atop a mound of reindeer skulls as they lay amongst snow. By placing these two photographs – one contemporary and the other ‘historical’ – Pile o’ Sámpi draws connections between the devastating North-American hunting of buffalos, beginning under United States’ military sanction in the 1800s as a tactic for removing American Indians from their

God’s Way of Saying I’m Sorry), 1997-

OWEN CHRISTOPH

land (and which very nearly rendered buffalos extinct), and contemporary practices of reindeer hunting in Norway. Though Pile o’ Sámpi conveys a largely didactic message condemning these practices, the combination of its ominous overtones and the meticulous construction of the works emanates a triumphant, even proud, sensibility that captures the eye and invites prolonged attention.

My next stop was the Museum Fridericianum where the National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) collection was on loan from Athens as a core pedagogical and embodied component of doumenta’s two-part presentation this year. The collection, which primarily features work from the 1960s onward, focuses on Greek and Eastern-European artists, along with a number of other high-profile artists; such as, Mona Hatoum, Janine Antoni, and Wolfgang Tillmans. The standout work on the first floor is the South African artist, Kendell Geers’ large-

(fig.25) Kendell Geer, Acropolis Redux (The Director’s Cut), 2004

On the second floor, occupying a large room of its own, Artur Żmjewski’s six black-andwhite films, grouped under the single title Realism (2017) play on loop. Though each video is different, the subject matter is all the same: men with amputated legs performing athletic exercises and demonstrating how they complete everyday tasks – whether it is putting on pants or turning over in bed. The stationary placement of the camera and the straight-forward, centered shots evoke a

disconcerting sense that the men are subjects or even specimen: their (dis)ability a spectacle to be reveled at. Realism raises for me the politics of representation and visibility – what does the ethical presentation and reception of Other-ized bodies look like? These videos, which in some shots abjectly feature only the thigh and an amputated limb, seem to miss the mark.

(fig. 25)

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scale minimalist installation, Acropolis Redux (The Director’s Cut) (2004) which makes use of Geers’ now signature metal shelves and razor wire. While here the varied assortment of shiny barbed-fence wiring is neatly coiled and stacked to the brim on a collection of metal shelves, the work cannot help but recall scenarios in which barbed-wire haphazardly ornaments the borders between nations, private property fences, and concrete military base walls. In fact, this scene becomes explicit in Andrea Bower’s mural-scale

drawing No Olvidado – Not Forgotten (2010) on the second floor. However, rather than acting as a threatening barrier, the coiled razor wire in Acropolis Redux is more of a supply stock waiting to be put to use – a possibility which is likely to come sooner rather than later as xenophobic, nationalist, and neo-reactionary political movements continue to rise. Somewhat of an outlier – though certainly a welcome one – is Janine Antoni’s elaborate

(fig. 28) Slumber (detail)

(fig. 27) Slumber (detail)

(fig. 26) Janine Antoni, Slumber, 1994

(fig. 26)

(fig. 27)

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(fig. 28)

textiles and wool into a blanket. Slumber offers a new meditative mode in which to think our subconscious into materiality through sustained attention and ritualistic engagement with our dream-state as embodied in REM recordings. Finally, the last venue I squeezed into my first day was Documenta Halle, built in 1992 for documenta IX, and this year has a thematic program concerned with scores, performance, and sound. Like staccatos on a musical score, works from Pope L.’s Skin Set Project (1997-) are scattered throughout the modernist building: at the crux of a staircase, on the small wall space next to the entrance to the main exhibition space, and a triptych featured in one of the galleries. Casually written on 8.5’’ x 11’’ paper, all begin (Green/Black/White) “People Are…” followed by ambiguous poetic descriptions – some loosely outlined and others accompanied by scribbled annotations in the margins. While the overarching thematic questions of documenta14 are concerned with borders, national identity, and refugees, there was little explicit attention paid to race relations, outside

(fig. 29) Aboubakar Fofana, Fundi (Uprising),

installation Slumber (1994) which has been meticulously reinstalled on the second floor. Though originally a performance-installation, Slumber is presented here as a tableau – staged as though Antoni had simply left the scene momentarily. The nude-toned installation is framed by reams of wool that drape from the loom to the structure housing the spindles against the gallery wall; beneath the thick cloud of strings a simple bed adorned with a single pillow and wool blanket which, bunched up on the floor, extends back to the loom from which it is still connected and being continuously added to. Against the far wall, a pile of paper with the the sharp jags of Antoni’s rapid eye movement (REM) cycle has accumulated aside the electroencephalograph machine – beneath which archival boxes are labeled with the dates of past performances, and presumably contain similar recordings. In its original presentation, Antoni would sleep in the bed while her REM was recorded by an electroencephalograph machine and then printed onto paper. During the day she would use the printed graphs as a design for weaving light blue, magenta, red

(fig. 29)

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of the Skin Set Project, and a collection of works from my second day, which I will discuss below. DAY II: My second day began with a visit to the elegant Palais Bellevue, a former residence built for Charles I, and which features some of the most compelling video works that documenta14 has to offer. In The Shadow (2017), a videoperformance by the artist Regina José Galindo, a leopard tank follows the artist as she runs around a clearing within a wooded forest, becoming increasingly exhausted and frantic. The work’s accompanying description critiques the military-industrial-complex and draws attention to the hypocrisy of Germany’s prohibition of arms despite being amongst “the top five arms manufacturers in the world.” On the next floor, the German artist, Olaf Holzapfel’s exhibition within an exhibition, encompassed by the overarching title Zuan (2017), consists of an outdoor sculpture, archival materials and architectural models, culminating in the 40-minute video Latitutd 40° (2017). In it, laborers in Chile build an extensive fencing matrix for a cattle ranch, shots pan snow-capped Chilean mountains, and the ebb and flow of clouds is contrasted via a split screen. Aesthetically captivating, Latitud 40° juxtaposes natural mountain ranges, manmade borders, and the diffuse ephemerality of clouds to build a poignant argument about the violence and futility of constructed borders, yet simultaneously situates this critique within an understanding of border formations brought about by nature itself. On the third floor was Roee Rosen’s hilarious, chilling, and cinematic film The Dust Channel (2016). A Dyson Seven vacuum cleaner is anthropomorphized through a relationship with a man and woman who obsessively compulsively clean their elegant home all the while operatically singing erotic verses to it: “Rise, Dyson Seven,” “Breathe, Dyson 52 summer 2017

Seven,” “In, Dyson Seven, suck, suck, suck.” Accompanying the duo is a team of refugees-cum-housecleaners playing classical instruments all the while hiding from the police, who eventually catch them. The Dust Channel draws a connection between refugees, the accumulation of dirt, and the OCD-like hunt to remove both. Following the refugees-cumhousecleaner-cum-musician’s discovery, edited clips of news reels on the European refugee crisis roll by with hyperbolized headlines declaring, “IT’S US OR THEM,” as well as clips of interviews with Sir James Dyson who describes creating over 5,000 models in order to perfect the Dyson. The film ends with an eerie, self-reflexive scene in which the Dyson Seven

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(fig. 31)

(fig. 30) Regina José Galindo, The Shadow, 2017 (fig. 31) Olaf Holzapfel, Zuan, 2017 (detail) (fig. 32) Roee Rosen, The Dust Channel, 2017

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moves itself in front of a TV to watch footage of a Dyson vacuum cleaner manufacturing and field-testing plant. Next door at the Neue Galerie, the entire collection has been replaced by an assortment of documenta14 artists including Otobong Nkanga, Lorenza Böttner, Pope L., and the couple Elizabeth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle. In the museum’s foyer, Nkanga’s performance and installation Carved to Flow (2017) is activated on a daily basis by an assistant who dons a black, custom-made, semi-circular metal shelf with individualized compartments for the display and sale of the artist’s soap, O8 Black Stone, made from charcoal, and oils and butters from across the Mediterranean, Middle East, North and West Africa. Before offering to sell the soap (€20) to her audience, the performer explains the origins and manufacturing of the soap as well as the artist’s intentions behind the work.

On the second floor, an entire room is dedicated to Lorenza Böttner (1975-94), the disabled, transgender Chilean artist of Germanic descent who died at a young age due to HIV-related complications. On display are Böttner’s selfportraits of various mediums (photographs, drawings, paintings) made using the dexterity of her mouth and feet. Perhaps most striking is the large-scale pastel self-portrait of Böttner looking down at the (her?) baby in her lap, which she is nursing with a bottle of milk. Rather than presenting her work decontextualized, Böttner’s work is presented alongside an extensive description and archival materials which provides viewers with a biographical understanding – in doing so, Böttner and her work becomes a spectacle. The self-proclaimed eco-sexual, artist-couple, Elizabeth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle, is also given a room to themselves in which they present an amalgamation of sculptures, summer 2017 53

photographs, videos, magazines, ephemera, and archival materials (1973-2017). Hanging prominently against the wall is their banner/ manifesto, “25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth,” a list of 25 commands that has been edited from an earlier edition with the stable pronoun “her” to a mixture of “her,” “their,” and “him” to update and genderfuck Earth. Throughout documenta14, the couple, along with a number of assistants, also stage performances, including the overtly (and perhaps overly) didactic Eco-Sexual Walking Tour – an experience I happened to stumble upon as I left the Fridericianum on my first day. The second floor also includes a series of rooms that reexamines the representation of people of color within the classical art historical archive. Amongst the display is a series of works by Ludwig Emil Grimm (1790-1863) with the titles: Two Mulattoes, Studies of Heads, 1815, Gypsy Life, 1840, and Three Haggling Jews, 1820; however, the most intriguing of Grimm’s works is a small ink drawing on paper, A young lady wearing a ball gown is exhibited in a cage in front of a group of natives, 1853. In it, a white-appearing woman is dressed in a gown characteristic of the aristocracy of the time, while a crowd of “natives” (represented in a racist, stereotypical manner) look on – a scene which could be read as a reversal of the depictions of the African woman, Sarah Baartman (1789-1815), who was being paraded around Europe for “freak-show entertainment” during Grimm’s own lifetime. Though laudable for its highly political content, documenta14 as a whole feels disappointingly constrained by rigid thematic categories, uninspired aesthetics, and sloppy organization and presentation (summed up by the graphic identity for the exhibition map). However, despite that, its artists raise and address contemporary and increasingly urgent and global questions building around refugees, borders, and migration. 54 summer 2017

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REVIEWS

‘THIS IS A FREE ZONE’ MAY 27 - JULY 2, 2017 NGBK

OWEN CHRISTOPH

Standing out amongst the restaurants and boutiques along Oranienstraße in Berlin’s rapidly gentrifying Kreuzberg is the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), where its modest bookstore and small exhibition space are located. As a multifunctional art organization its unique, grass-roots, nonhierarchical governing structure has helped it to become a significant contributor to the city’s radical-left art scene through curating exhibitions, hosting a public programme of lectures and events, as well as operating a publishing house, along with other projects – all decided upon by the collective’s members. THIS IS A FREE ZONE: Queerhana in the context of autonomous movements in Israel/ Palestine from 2001-2009 is first and foremost an exhibition; however, it is accompanied by a publication, an event series, as well as the documentary film, “Nation Monsters and Superqueers.” Supplemented by archival materials (D.I.Y. posters, objects, photographs) and short films, THIS IS A FREE ZONE primarily consists of amateur video footage documenting the raves and protests organized by the Isareli-Palistinian radical queer anarchists who, through their parties and activism, came to be known as Queerhana. Strewn throughout the exhibition space, bean 56 summer 2017

bags and wooden benches are paired with headphones offering viewers a space of reprieve and the opportunity to become absorbed (though not uncritically) in footage of the hedonism and joy of queer youth dancing with one another. The show provides an overarching retrospective of the queer movement that thrived between 2001 and 2009, as well as present-day interviews with some of its members as they look back on the potentials, conflicts, successes, and failures of Queerhana. Influenced by Hakim Bey’s theorization of the “Temporary Autonomous Zone” or TAZ, Queerhana sought to create spaces outside of state control that encouraged gender fluidity, political activity, and the breaking of social norms. They did this by organizing spontaneous, free and inclusive parties beneath freeway overpasses, commercial streets under construction, and of course, warehouses.

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Raising a bevy of questions and concerns not only against state violence, but also leftwing politics, Queerhana contended with the question and feasibility of “safe spaces” by asking: how can free spaces be created that are not structured by the same exclusionary and policing power-relations that they seek to escape? How can any space be “safe” while caught within a war-zone between Israel and Palestine? These are some of the questions that interviewees self-reflexively pose and think through in “Nation Monsters and Superqueers.” Though certainly proud of Queerhana – as it has come to represent a rather special and engaged queer movement – refreshingly, those involved look back not with an over-romanticized or defeatist perspective, but with a critical eye that acknowledges the power-relations within the group, other points of tension, as well as their failure, at times, to address them.

DEVIL’S FREEDOM (LA LIBERTAD DEL DIABLO) MATILDA HAGUE

“It seems that the Mexican audience has divorced its cinema” lamented Professor Ana Rosas Mantecón during our meeting last week. Most audience members I interview argue that national film is just still simply not that good (yet). Perhaps another reason for this zeal could also be the crudeness of some films. Ana told me she simply didn’t think she would be capable to sit through La Libertad del Diablo (Devil’s Freedom), which opened the independent film festival this July at Cineteca’s*:

Foro Internacional. In it, director Everardo Gonzalez reveals the harsh reality of the Drug War with the help of Diego Enrique Osorno’s investigations in the North. Testimonies vary from children, parents or friends of the disappeared. There’s a remarkable intimacy in these close ups as tears stain the nude masks of daughters losing their mother. How would you get revenge? The same unifying mask is used for perpetrators and police officers. Who should be held accountable for these deaths? This account does not sugar coat the abominable and absurd situation that Osorno has extensively been reporting on since before the conflict officially started in 2006. Here it gives these voices a face -- or rather a mask to show the people behind the numbers. This narcotraffic already claims 300,000 deaths since. These stories hit home for all. The conflict has progressed from a distant violence statistic to a personal affair. It could happen to your mother, your cousin or your partner next. Rightfully so, some people, like Ana, are tempted to avoid the harshness of this account. Spectators carry the weight of these voices far beyond the screening room. Cineteca Nacional serves as an oasis for independent film amongst the arid landscape of Hollywood ‘garbage’ distributed in most commercial theaters. As the national film archive it seems adequate for them to shed light on the current anxieties in Mexico. We can only hope that this documentary, and others equally important Mexican productions will show nationally and internationally. *Cineteca Nacional: Federal institution for the preservation, archiving and promotion of film heritage. Around seventy percent of contemporary Mexican film is shown at Cineteca, adding to their vast national and international archive.

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