Review | "They say progress i...

Generated on 2022-10-13 22:14:17

Result #1

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night." That's what my friend Willis Short told me at the time of our mutual opening night. I asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he'd ever heard of the punk band, or one of those big, blond, swan-necked girls that you see on magazine covers. He said, yes, but he didnt remember. Willis, he says, liked punk music. I think hes talking about a cult. I ask him if he knows anything about cults. He says hes an art historian. I say, what about punk? Willis gives me a copy of T. S. Eliot and a question for me. He asks, Is it possible that there wasnt any punk music? I say, thats about all I can find. Willis says, Its about an esthetic. And thats when I say, well, thats where I am, outside the box. He goes on to say that cults—and he only refers to them as a couple of times in the course of a conversation—were the butt of his childhood. What I had never realized is that Curtis recently had a show at the Wendys in New York called Queens Park. Cunnys New York. So whats my relation to that? Willis asked. He turned to me and said, Its a joke. I said, I dont know. And he says, Its about that pep-chunk thing. Its been happening for years. Its pretty much a way of life, not just for the new art kid, but for the whole neighborhood. No shock here. I agree. I had just passed out from the pep-chunk thing. Willis has said that this is the scene of the punk world. It becomes part of our identity. We cant escape that. He says, Its the mother tongue.No shock, just a lot of people together, laughing, chatting, making music, eating, drinking, having fun.

Result #2

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night." The heart of this interactive piece was an ad for a happy, naughty spin-off in which a closed-down gallery is transformed into a puddle; a closed gallery is transformed into a buoy; a closed gallery is transformed into a slick hotel. The opening piece in this seemingly systematic continuum is a shopping cart, which, although filled with all the usual fare, now leaves as one could imagine, into a swan song of candy and beverages. (The vending machines are replaced by what the piece calls a package machine. The line of credit is set up to purchase what the viewer can never procure. The cart is turned and empty. There is a beat-up, filled-up shopping cart with a knockoff Barbie. There is one bright orange cart with two paper cups and a bottle of champagne. This would appear to be a rickety concession stand. Only the cart and the plastic cup (or bottle of champagne) remain to be purchased, as does the cart with the corner from the corner behind it, a garbage bin, and a stack of trash bags. This is not a sign of the imaginary doing to be done, but of the real; it is, by the same token, an open cart with a moving cart, open for business and business as usual.And so the work begins. The audience is asked to choose from the things that were not on display; the choices are endless. For instance, the shopping cart is filled with a fortune cookie—a hot dog with a cookie. Next, the plastic cup is offered up as a possible place to hold a beer. And the camera slowly pans over the storage area, and as it gets there, a frantic and confused expression follows the opening band to the punch line. The camera is close to the cart; its opening door is still ajar, as it were.

Result #3

-JOHN FINK in the last four pages of a National Enquirer interview. The hottest word to hear is overcast. Lately, the heaven of radio is filled with groovy tunes. I have the best. And this is the best in the city.

Result #4

-Maureen Galligan.White-on-white star, I take it, and theres no harm in it, but I still wonder how one stays in the air if the crowd outside is eight minutes late, the person at the podium is in a wheelchair, a giant high-heeled shoe is dangling in the middle of the lobby, and a teacher is stuttering her Cranes. Whatever happens, the game has already begun.Ive not used this platform before. Ive never been on one of its so-called short fields, just like Ive never been outside its bubble, but Ive never felt so alienated from the eyes of the audience. Its not that I dont like the fact that I am surrounded by a space full of people, I just think its that the feeling you get when youre standing in the wrong place is a bit different. When the play begins, your head shakes and your heart jumps, even though youre in the right place, so how do you feel? In the end, its not the aural that counts, its the lines you make as the lines you stand at the podium. If the space is crowded with all the people who came for the lineup of the performers, its the line between your chair, your back and your eyes that counts. Its the line between your anxiety and your inner strength.

Result #5

"They say progress is a grinding heel on the face of mankind. I intend to be wearing the boot."- "A wise sys-op must be like water. wanting to let flash, scatter in the everyday landscape what “was so closed, flat, peculiar”; wanting to see the thing convulse in the body of the other: summons him to see/feel for himself another time, prolonged, plunging into the dark, at the limit of the sensitive, where things vibrate micro, infra Shifting, flowing, adapting. Be the docile stream when your enemy sees you first, then when his eyes turn elsewhere, become the raging tsunami. 'Let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?' - Ji "Noise" Reilly. Multitasking and, no questions asked. 10 office computers and 100,000 creds later, I'm out through the 103rd floor window. Some might call it the score of a lifetime, I call it a normal Saturday night." Its not the overcast, smoggy night I go to forget, not the under-the-table circumstances that all-too-often motivate the casual workaday observer. I get an early hang up on the whole thing, being thrown between the two ways of things: with the score (I did it for two hours, with no rhythm or hints of a rhythm, then—exhausted), the credits (I was given the credit); and now, the convergence, the multichannel experience that I have only a vague idea of. But at least thats the whole story. Nine thousand scrawl lines to become all-of-a-piece text, at a time when theres an entire theatre world occupied with making a movie from video? What kind of a program is this? Audience may have not been asked for a score (although the vaudevillian voice suggested, with enough zest that I never paid it any mind), but there was an audience-music jam. The audience, middle-aged, well-dressed and unusually numerous (to begin with), sat like ants on the floor of a hotel room. Who were they? Were they the audience, or the performances? The act? The audience? The acting? The audience? Me? And why was the composer and the violinist so well suited to this project? This is nothing like imagining how people will react to a score. Most likely, no one will even notice. Youll have to look at the work with some kind of doubt on your mind. But thats the other side of the coin. That being a big-league success, it must be amazing.There are probably many more questions about this. And theres a lot more discussion to be had in the pages of the New York Post.