Center of the Earth Gallery in Charlotte to close

by Travis Jeppesen on May 8, 2010

Sad to hear the news about one of my hometown galleries. My earliest exposure to visual art came from this neighborhood, which they nearly singlehandedly pioneered.

Identity Drag

by Travis Jeppesen on May 1, 2010

With the advent of post-structuralist philosophy and the spread of issue-based political activism in the latter half of the 20th century, the problem of identity arguably emerged as the most pressing ideological issue of the Zeitgeist. While it also enabled the creation of a lot of bad art, a new exhibition in Berlin has triumphantly found a way to re-investigate the issue while avoiding the pitfalls of preachy didacticism. In the three video works included in “Angst.Macht.Raum,” the first of a proposed three-part exhibition exploring the mechanics of power, curator Viktor Neumann has put forth an intriguing test to the means by which fear is used to enforce oppressive codes of normality as Western discourse continues to expand its liberal doctrines, like a volcanic cloud, via globalization.

1974’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is probably the most well known film in the Rainer Werner Fassbinder oeuvre, if not one of the most cohesive. In characteristic fashion, the film virulently indicts the ugly racial tensions underlying relations between Germans and foreigners in 1970s West Germany – as well as the (namely working-) class prejudices that fueled them – through the story of a middle-aged German woman who becomes romantically involved with a younger Moroccan Gastarbeiter. In Angst Essen/Eat Fear (2008), the Singaporean artist Ming Wong has re-made the film into a 28-minute version in which he plays all the characters himself. The result is a stunning deluge of bitter ironies, as the notion of drag is expanded beyond cross-gender appropriation to encompass language, race, ethnicity, and nation. Wong himself is neither German, nor a native German speaker, nor white, nor Moroccan, etc.; yet Fassbinder’s script is stuck to verbatim. Thus, the entire notion of authenticity is shown to be a sham.

Through humor, Angst Essen/Eat Fear raises disturbing questions regarding the relationship between the contemporaneous trend of transnational fetishization and the continual process of globalization that has come to encompass life in the 21st century. It points to the trope of identity tourism that has also come to assume an important role in the work of video artist Ryan Trecartin, among others.

Also included in the exhibition is a selection of Sadie Benning’s earliest video works, made on a Fisher Price Pixelvision camera given to her by her father, filmmaker James Benning. These short pieces, stemming from the early 1990s, utilize a collage technique that would seem accomplished in the work of a seasoned artist, making it all the more surprising to learn that the artist was only fifteen when she made them. While the films bear a certain stylistic similarity to the super-8 movies being made by other queer underground filmmakers of that era (notably G.B. Jones and Bruce Labruce), Benning’s work lacks the intentionally grainy roughness of that medium and aesthetic, and was clearly made in the isolation of a teenage bedroom, rather than the street – thus implying a retreat from the larger world, a fear of the socius and everything that it threatens to impose on the individual body. The overall effect is of a diaristic coming-into-being and a refutation of the sexual stigmatism that queer adolescents often have to grapple with in silence.

The most frightening work on display, however, is Mike, a video installation by the Berlin-based artist Rommelo Yu, from 2002. Entering into a pitch-black room, the spectator is drawn forth by a sort of loud shuffling noise. The sheer darkness of the space already creates a fearful uncertainty and a sense of suspicion in the spectator – where does one go without getting hurt? Could it be that the projector has malfunctioned? – until a shadowy figure appears in the darkness, almost like a ghost. It is the image of a muscular black man, dimly lit, moving his feet every few seconds from one posture to the next. It is a deceptively simple installation. Only afterwards did it occur to me that it is about whiteness, which is a mode of being that stretches across races, a role that all of us are forced to play at some point in our lives in order to “pass” – a role that is formed and informed by fear.

Towards the end of his short life, Fassbinder wrote, “I always make the same film again and again, obviously…It’s a film about someone trying, with all the means that are possible in this society, to find his identity. Only the man who is really identical with himself can be free from fear of fear.”

The first part of “Angst.Macht.Raum” asserts that this existential struggle continues to define who we are and what we wish to become. It follows that in a post-everything world, those who appear the most certain are merely the most skillful in the art of deception.

“Angst.Macht.Raum. (Part 1)” is on through May 2nd at the Senatsreservenspeicher Berlin.

Sol LeWitt & Martin Eder in Berlin

by Travis Jeppesen on April 22, 2010

My review of the Sol LeWitt show can now be read at Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art.

And at Artforum, there’s a review of the Martin Eder exhibition.

RIP Michael Godfrey

by Travis Jeppesen on April 9, 2010

Michael Godfrey, curator of the newly opened Becthler Museum in Charlotte, my home town, just passed away. Michael graciously took time out of a hectic schedule to give me a tour of the museum a few days before its official opening back in January. I was impressed with his sensitive, intuitive arrangement of the paintings, which only someone with a great eye could have managed. Always sad to see someone go before their time.

Itchy Homo, or Why I Am So Terrible

by Travis Jeppesen on March 23, 2010

An expanded version of my earlier blog post on Baselitz, bad writing, and the making of my novel The Suiciders, can now be read at Open Democracy.

One or Several Wolves: reading in London

by Travis Jeppesen on March 17, 2010

One or Several Wolves: multiplicities and packs in art

The event features an exhibition of the photographic work of London-based photographer Tereza Zelenkova, paintings and drawings by the New York-based artist Jason Saager and the novelist and art critic Travis Jeppesen performing a reading from his upcoming novel, The Suiciders.
Following the reading there will be an open discussion with the artists on their work.

Following the exhibition for your aural pleasure will be DJs
Maria Cecilia
James Batley
Liam Sparkes
Travis Jeppesen
With a selection of punk, post-punk, garage and grunge

Start Time:
Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 7:00pm
End Time:
Friday, April 2, 2010 at 1:00am
Location:
The Haggerston
Street:
438 Kingsland Road
City/Town:
London, United Kingdom

Wolf at the Door

by Travis Jeppesen on February 22, 2010

Me reading from Wolf at the Door.

George Condo in Berlin

by Travis Jeppesen on February 17, 2010

Read my review of the George Condo exhibition at Artforum.

Conversation Piece

by Travis Jeppesen on February 12, 2010

I interview Jens Hoffmann at Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

by Travis Jeppesen on February 9, 2010

Read my review of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres show in Brussels at Artforum.

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