united & untied

 

riding the train can be chocked up to doing one activity: avoiding eye contact. most people prefer their phones; others prefer their kindle, or book, as a method of distraction. however there are some times when we are forced to encounter each other, for example that familiar situation when you see someone you know and you have to either pretend you didn’t see them or happily wave at them, hoping that creates a mutual agreement in which neither party needs to approach the other. my favorite interaction however occurs when you are avoiding eye contact by looking out the windows, but what you are actually doing is staring at people’s reflections in the windows, sneakily, and someone else is doing the same. then you make eye contact with them in the reflection, and you share this moment of having caught each other in the act, but you can’t feel guilty, of course, because you were both doing it.
 
 

 

unica zurn

 
 
 
 

i learned that in the real world there are good and bad days, and there’s nothing you can do about it (save distract yourself when it comes to the bad). the flame that you can create your own reality begins to flicker when you realize you are not always doing things for yourself, but rather, for your boss. it begins to dim when you leave on time only to be surprised by the fact that the highway is practically a parking lot today, and nothing in your power can grow your car a pair of wings to fly over it. when you are striving for something you want, like a well-paying job so you can move out of your mom’s house, it inevitably comes with a load of shit that you don’t want, like having very little time to yourself, or manually changing 5,000 jpeg files into tifs (that probably won’t be looked at anyway), that you just have to accept and power through. the name of the game called life is “putting up with it” or “not taking it personally”, so that one day you can own this “it”. or every other day you can own it. and that, realistically, would be pretty good. 

balint zsako

 








one of the ways i’ve been learning to cope with having a 9-6 office job is by taking my lunch breaks to the playground- specifically the new, 20 acre maggie daley park, which sits within the much larger tourist attraction that is millenium park. ever since writing my playground manifesto, which is published here and also more formally in “canvas: the mcgill art history and communications journal” last winter, my infatuation with the playground-as-interactive-art-installation idea has only become more serious. so when i first saw this radical new park pop up while driving down lake shore drive one day, jaw open, i knew i wanted to be the expert on it, as well as one of its main inhabitants.
 

 
as a playground, it is particularly welcoming to adults- there are organic, winding paths; aesthetically pleasing, boat-themed clubhouses; swinging wooden bridges straight from indiana jones; and a wealth of giant metal slides which have “thrill” written all over them. there are oversized, lazy swings that you can recline on and 3-story structures that offer great views of the skyline, the ferris wheel at navy pier, and some of chicago’s many harbors. i was just beginning to get comfortable in one of the park’s hybrid tire swing/swings when a security guard approached me and asked me to get off, because i was older than the age of 12. i, without luck, tried to contest her on that point (“but age is just a number”), and walked away like a kid who opened a happy meal only to find that there was no toy inside.

a couple of days later a co-worker and i were directing a photoshoot of some school of the art institute (SAIC) graduate student artwork in a beautiful loft on michigan avenue, which overlooks millenium park and, of course, my whimsical fortress of lunch break heaven. reminded of the incident, i told her about the experience and my background in playground philosophy, and we discussed why such an atrocious and discriminatory rule exists. she suggested that it was a symptom of our fearful, control-freak society deeming adults around children not their own to be sexual predators. our twisted group mind excludes the idea that adults on swings or taking a joy ride down a slide could be wholesome individuals perhaps tapping into childhood memories, gaining inspiration from such innocent play or rearing the courage to have children of their own. rather than encouraging adults to gain something from using their imagination and escaping the more structured activities of office life, we are condemning them for an inescapable part of their identity: their age.

despite the disappointment i felt that day, i still feel, or want to feel, that this park has hope for us more “mature” children out there. if i want to make maggie daley park another one of my many homes in this world, i will have to address it like an Adult would: not by stomping my feet and crying to security, but by constructing a persuasive, ordered argument to the city of chicago. and this i plan to do, and do well, during all of that free time i now have from not being allowed on the swings.

(wisp calls)

 

last month i was summoned for jury duty. like everyone else, i assumed my panel number wouldn’t even get called, let alone that i would get chosen. i assumed that even if i did get picked i could up come with a good enough excuse to get out of it. but i must have appeared like perfect candidate, and clearly i was, because i wouldn’t be writing this, and you wouldn’t be reading this, if i had not indeed been one of the “chosen ones”.

that being said, the selection process was a remarkably personal and exposing public encounter- the judge announces to the court your full name, your age, your home address. imagine being sworn under oath and then him asking you, in front of a room full of (40? 50?) people, to describe your occupation and what your children’s names are if you have them and what they do and also what personal/ethnic biases you may have against any of the parties involved. like literally asking you to admit that you “can’t believe a thing a redhead says” in front of a room full of people (arbitrary example folks, not to worry). and to think that most people would rather die than speak in public..

after the court deliberated, the characters that got chosen for my panel involved:

-the girl who admitted to being able to eat an entire bag of candy corn in 2 days

-the ex-lawyer who the group looked to as our natural, unofficial leader

-the lethargic, 40 year black lady in the corner named “sparkles” who didn’t say a word

-the hispanic man, who clearly didn’t speak english, but smiled a lot, and nodded when everyone else did

-the foreign lady who took it as her job to break awkward silences

-the 2 yuppie girls making friends with each other, talking about their workout regimens, the grocery store and their fiances

-the other black lady who was just happy to be there instead of outside directing planes in negative-degree weather

-the lady cop with a bleach blonde cinnabon sized bun on top of her head (who looked more like a cartoon than an official)

-the jewish lady’s lawyer, who held doors open, smiled, poured us glasses of water to keep us on his side

-the defendant’s lawyer, a short man who talked like ditka who could make a point without even speaking – just clearing his throat at the right moment in the opposition’s speech

-me, in the corner, scribbling down ethnographic research on the provided legal pad

now, with all of these characters involved, i couldn’t help but to read into jury duty’s resemblance to theatre…the idea that the entire thing was simply a play of stereotypes and values. as i just started working at steppenwolf theater, drama has been on my mind, especially in combination with the ideas i gathered from my 20th century drama class about honesty, truth, and what theater does to unveil or conceal just what those are (see post: “that is thus”).

essentially, theater teaches us that each individual carries with them a different idea of truth- that no one shares the same truth- because everyone has a different perspective, takes a different path, putting together their own personal experiences to create only a partial vision of “the whole story”. as drama often unfolds, we see that what is true to one character in a play (that they have been having an extramarital affair) may be completely different to another character’s truth (that their spouse is a faithful and happy companion), and the audience is in the unique, god-like position of seeing both sides to the same story, or maybe even 3 or 4 or 5 sides. at jury duty, we were in the audience’s position as 2 different sides- the prosecutor, the defendant- of the same story were delivered to us. it was our job to decide whose side carried more truth, or what, with the evidence presented, actually happened at the scene of the crime.


 
in particular, we were dealing with what the jury unanimously decided was an over-dramatic woman trying to sue a cab driver who hit her at 5-10mph tops and caused her “whiplash”, “two broken teeth” (which cracked, according to dental records, mysteriously 3 months after the accident), and upwards of $70,000 worth of “pain and suffering”. after sitting through 3 days of doctors, dentists, physical therapists, and lawyers testimonies, we were allowed to deliberate the multiple stories that were delivered to us, stringing together the disparate pieces of evidence that were presented to create a vision of “the whole story”.

of course, no one will ever know the whole story, because it might not have been strategic for either party to disclose. despite the air of objectivity that the court tries to create- using high paid professionals (the PHDs clocked in at $1,000 an hour to participate) and that whole ritualistic “i will tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth” rigamarole to fabricate a sense of trust in the evidence- everything was still very subjective, very performative- presented in a way to achieve a desired reading. the lawyers spoke from curated scripts, including only the information that would help their cases, and leaving out or objecting to anything that could raise a question about their claims. it remained, for example, undisclosed whether or not the couple made it to their dinner reservation after the accident, and no records of any car repairs were provided, making it questionable if she really did break her tooth in the incident. just like theater, then, the court uses a strategic play of dialogue to blur just what the truth is, only to reveal that there is none, or at least none that we mere mortals can access (it makes sense, considering this, that a jehovah’s witness in the jury selection process told the judge she could not participate because she believes “it is not our place to be The Judge”. she got out of it, of course).

the justice system like theater makes evident that there is never just one way of seeing...but the justice system, unlike theater, makes a final decision about which way to see- a decision which makes a very real impact on the freedom and future of an individual.

at first, i had never felt so close to the constitution. i slightly believe the judge selected each of us because, after our brief yet revealing introductions, he decided we were the ones who needed this sort of lesson (the hispanic man, for instance, could be taught what being an american citizen means; i, as the youngest person there, could be taught what it means to make important decisions which impact real-life circumstances). but by the end of the process, what i learned was how far we actually are from the constitution, how hard it is to have rules and institutions around unquantifiable human behavior. i learned that although we can create systems of order, human behavior will always prevail, uncontained, as it did when the defending lawyer called the plantiff a “con-artist”, or when he played into our specific emotions- some of the jury were victims of more serious car accidents, as he learned during the introductions, and some of our faces could be read to reveal our biases- in order to sway our sympathies. the justice system, like theater, is a living breathing thing, always contingent upon the performance delivered, and the individual experiences which the audience members (or jury) bring with them. considering this, the idea of chaos is the closest thing we have to the idea of truth.

the jury duty experience then fits well into the other life lessons i’m gathering out here in “the real world”: that you can have a full-time job and a cubicle at a prestigious institution and still be surrounded by people who have no idea what they’re doing, in life or otherwise; that you can take the train at the same time every morning but still arrive at a different time everyday; that your employers might not actually notice or even really care that you’re late because of said train because their cat is sick and that’s all they can think about. adults are really just children in grown-up bodies with fancy titles and suits and paperwork, who look at their watches more often than the sky and complain about the weather so they don’t have to reveal themselves to each other. it’s interesting, and funny, and this world is more full of mystery than anyone, it seems, but me, wants to think about.







‘
 




featured artists: andrew b meyers, jacob jugashvili, jade fenu

into fog

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

~The Secret Sits by Robert Frost

Oscar Lind Modin

 

Leif Podhajsky

 

Mark Lovejoy

Leslie Shows

Alessandro Keegan

Naomi Johanna Ilona Nowak

Carly Waito

 

Vandalcore

 

Wout Werensteijn

 

Bruce Riley

 

Gordon Terry

 

 

Dave Chenell

...We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

lucy hue

(this one is called, “everyone thinks you’re an asshole, carl andre”)

i read an article lately called contemporary art’s body language which posits that we are witnessing the return of the figure in fine art, the author john seed suggesting that more and more contemporary artists have begun to display their technical skill at rendering the human form as a reaction to the barren, minimalist abstract art that dominated the visual culture of the 20th century.  seed recognizes that while the proliferation of modes of media dissemination nowadays denies any one style of art to take on the weighty status of a “movement”- a singular, unified undertaking like the impressionist, surrealist, abstract expressionist movements which came before us- it seems as though artists across a broad range of mediums are concerned with the way the one universal trait we all share- having a body- defines us in contemporary life.





whether it is in glitch art, which explores how one’s conception of the limits of one’s body now extends into the digital universe, or in oil paint, where we now see the realist style of the 16-19th centuries employed in scenes of 21st century,  urban life, the themes and references proposed by the figure appear to be much more recognizable, much more accessible, than the esoteric modern art that has left art museums feeling cold and oppressive to the public for the greater part of the 1900s and early 2000s. as a.o. scott remarks in his NY Times article, "we are in the midst of hard times now, and it feels as if art is failing us." at a time when the body has become yet again an electric subject- charged with issues of race, as seen in the recent protests against police brutality, as well as gender and class and sexual orientation- i can state my opinion that re-addressing the body and the biases of looking at it is socially productive and necessary- not only for the survival of the art institution and its relevance to society but also to serve as a mirror of our current behavior, the public battle of our beliefs, of power relations.
while a similar push to re-integrate the body into art occurred alongside the civil rights movements of the 1960s in the form of radical performance art by the likes of marina abramovic, robert morris and carolee schneemann, popular belief that contemporary art is too academic or too removed from society has forced us to re-evaluate just how we should achieve such re-integration. after all, watching schneeman pull a scroll out of her vagina may not be as accessible to the public as a highly trained art historian might think. emerging artist kehinde wiley’s oil paintings, on the other hand, make us bluntly confront the politics of black bodies by presenting life-sized portraits of black men and women in contemporary clothing posing and staring back at us much like the rich merchants and generals of dutch portraits. the signifiers are there; even an untrained eye can dispute the relevance of their clothes, their expressions, their gestures; the scale of canvas, or the choice of background.
 
 
 

in this sense the return of the figure represents a sort of democratization of art, bringing the conversation back into the realm of the public forum where anyone- not just the art institution- can contribute and discuss ideas. we already see this happening on the internet, where art is being circulated, reviewed and commented upon more than ever, by people from art experts and dealers to those who approach the work from a different angle completely, perhaps simply interested in the subject depicted. if the right kind of curator brings the figure- like wiley’s work, or else something recognizable- back into the language of the contemporary art museum, could we see the same sort of interdisciplinary discussion occurring in person?

this opening up of the conversation or democratization, however, would not be groundbreaking, but would follow the same blueprint as almost every other game-changing movement in art history, from impressionism to the dutch golden age. dutch painters such as vermeer and jan van steen often drew the public into the conversation by depicting familiar characters of dutch life- of high and low social standing- in ever-so-subtly controversial ways. the dutch painters seemed to be obsessed with painting what seemed to be everyday, well-dressed housewives drinking and socializing with foreign men (assumedly soldiers from overseas) in their homes while their husbands are away. we see that the sun pouring through the open window in each image strategically illuminates the wine glass she is working on, provoking frank discussion on whether or not day drinking could be considered acceptable behavior in their society and what these strange men are doing in their “moral” upper-class homes.









contemporary artist Susan Copich in her series domestic bliss takes a nod from the dutch masters, using figures in her photos to similarly question the “normal” american household, what constitutes a moral housewife and the limits of what we would call “functional”.

 

in all of its in-your-face offensiveness, copich’s work ends up a bit more effective than this post’s opening artwork by carl andre, wouldn’t you think? dont get me wrong, i have always been a supporter of conceptual art and have painstakingly tried to explain its significance to my friends who may have less experience with art, academically or otherwise. while i and many art historians could argue that conceptual art contains more "reality", as it reflects one’s embodied, subjective experience of the world rather than just the way it looks, i could not argue the same for my friends, who view minimalist work and see nothing but steel on the floor.

maybe its my frustration that i have only a few people to talk "art" with, but i think including and encouraging the uninformed or "low-brow" opinion could bring contemporary art closer to what it strives to be - a truly open-ended, no-answer-is-the-right-answer type of practice which thrives on new approaches to the same problem. in order to do so, and to sum up the bulk of this post, we should value those artists that represent a world we can relate to, with all the substance and grime and bias that we see and deal with everyday. as a.o. scott suggests, we need to "to advance a discussion about what art has done and should do at this moment of political impasse, racial tension and economic crisis,” and allow as many participants as possible into the ongoing conversation.

~

outlaws, porn stars and ‘civilized’ sexual morality

    

 

 
 

 


 
in this post i present to you my final sexual ethics paper, written in february 2014. while what i write i find to be complete common sense, and despite an outpouring of support for the LGBT community on social media, i still find that these accepting values are not always carried over into everyday life. in other words, while most people preach for equality, they still treat the queer community as the social “other” in subtle, subtextual ways, mainly by allowing one's sexuality to define who he or she is as a person. to get anything accomplished we all need to be participating in this conversation, so, here is my voice-
 

Outlaws, Porn Stars and ‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality

 

On February 21, 2014 a Duke University freshman porn star wrote an open letter to the public in response to overwhelming online and on-campus harassment following the revelation of her identity or “alter-ego” to thousands of her peers via the fraternity network. Confidently claiming her right to choose and authorize her own sexuality, she states, “Let’s be clear about one thing: I know exactly what I’m doing. What about you?” (Lauren). Directing the question back at her audience, she begs readers to consider how they take part in the construction and marginalization of her sexuality. In doing so, she provokes readers to take on a constructivist perspective towards sexuality, to see sex as “a result of diverse social practices that give meaning to human activities, of social definitions and self-definitions” that they can participate in changing (Weeks 31). The constructivist position, which emphasizes the fluidity and illimitability of sexual desire, is counterbalanced by the nativist approach, which instead sees “that a given pattern of sexuality is native to the human constitution” (Connell 265). From this approach grows the adverse, underlying Western (Christian) assumption that forms of sexual desire which fall outside of “natural” or socially sanctioned sexual practices reflect moral deviance and, in popular belief, mental illness. Thus as nativism plays into the misguided oppression and discrimination against certain groups for the benefit of others, the Duke University student porn star and constructivists such as Sigmund Freud, Christine Gudorf and Martha Nussbaum advocate that we step away from the nativist model, insisting instead that social institutions and infrastructures take the embodied experience of the human being and freedom of choice as their main priority.

 
Freud was the first scholar to adopt a constructivist attitude toward sexuality, assessing in his essay “’Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness” that one’s sexuality is complexly related to one’s environment, and thus is never pre-social or destined. For example, a person may decide whether or not to be openly homosexual depending on what is or is not taken as “normal” within a given context, and how that context might react; in severe cases, “the man who… cannot fall in with this suppression of instinct, becomes a ‘criminal,’ an ‘outlaw’ in the face of society” (167). As such, Freud suggests that sexuality is a complex moral issue which shapes subjects into being and behaving. Further, he offers the idea that Western morality (i.e. sex only acceptable within lawful marriage) is unrealistic and detrimental, since it is dependent upon, and in constant tension with, individuals’ repression of their natural instincts and drives. Accordingly, he states that “it is one of the obvious social injustices that the standard of civilization should demand from everyone the same conduct of sexual life,” seeing that an individual’s reservoir of unsatisfied sexual desire is subconsciously channeled or “sublimated” into either socially sanctioned activities on the one hand (if lucky) or madness (i.e. “hysteria”) on the other (171). In this way, Freud perpetuates Victorian-age, nativist perceptions associating the constitution of one’s sexuality with neurotic illness. What future scholars take away from Freud’s work, however, is not this association but the groundwork of the constructivist argument, that sexuality is cultivated by the meanings society assigns to it.
 
Freud’s argument lies at the heart of Christine Gudorf’s assertion that the inherited, dimorphic (i.e. dualistic) sexual paradigm is becoming less and less intelligible to modern society. Developments in biological research, for example, have challenged the nativist, Christian assumption that “humans were ‘naturally’ divided into two sexes,” with unusual chromosomal patterns offering the possibility of third-sex or perhaps unclassifiable sexes (866). Alfred Kinsey’s sociological research complements these new biological findings with his discovery that “there is, in fact, a spectrum of human sexual orientation from exclusively heterosexual at one end to exclusively homosexual at the other,” denying the possibility of dualistic classification of sexual desire (873). As such, a polymorphic paradigm emerges out of our old dimorphic one, posing challenges to any simple identification of an individual’s sexuality and thus its import on that individual’s “moral” status. Accordingly, in their essay “The Unclean Motion of the Generative Parts: Frameworks in Western Thought on Sexuality,” Connell and Dowsett suggest that the polymorphic approach leads “to a more fragmented and multi-leveled account of sexualities” which unsettles binaries of regular/irregular, and thus acceptable/unacceptable, sexual practices and desires (280).


 
Notably, Gudorf acknowledges that the polymorphic paradigm is difficult to adopt or fully accept because of its complexity, because it denies us our desire to order the world around us in simple, knowable terms (865). She particularly focuses on the practical problems polymorphism poses for religious institutions, since the dimorphic paradigm is “foundational for the moral and religious rules and commandments of religions” (880). For example, Christianity’s foundational story of Adam and Eve teaches that man and woman embody specific gender roles which are created in the image of God, and are therefore incontestable. Emerging from this story is the belief that the woman’s sexuality is the origin of sin, and that in order to go to heaven a man must exercise control over his sexuality and thus over women (this is where our Duke University porn star’s problems begin). In other words, this story introduced the culturally engrained dimorphism that moral female sexuality must be passive and the male’s, active. As such, “new work roles and domestic roles for men and women clearly impact religious norms of holiness,” as women take on leadership roles and more and more men become “stay-at-home dads” (Gudorf 881). Such developments begin to make pious observers question: is believing in Christianity incompatible with modern demands and the new social “norms”? Whose interpretation of these rules are we reading? Is the Christian doctrine simply a discourse set to keep those in power with power?
 

 
Martha Nussbaum would say that in many cases it is constructed to do just that. To support her argument, Nussbaum points to the fact that in ancient Greek culture, “bisexual desire was assumed to be ubiquitous, and gender of object was simply far less significant than the choice of the active or passive role” (237). In contemporary Western society, however, bisexuality is presumed to be a transgressive and defining feature of one’s identity, a label of sin and guilt which denies an individual of his or her own self-definition. Through this contrast in moral signification surrounding gender of object in the two cultures we recognize that “our own norms and practices” are “ours rather than universal and necessary,” that the moral standards we hold people to are constituted by the intersection of social practices and political agendas rather than by a “naturally given” set of rules (237). Even if they were “natural,” Nussbaum suggests, “it would not follow that we cannot and should not change” them (237). Accordingly, Nussbaum takes on a liberal perspective, urging her readers to question passively inherited dimorphic categories- which do not account for the historical, cultural, and personal relativity of sexuality- by educating themselves in the ways in which, but more importantly why, these traditions came into being. Ultimately, she insists “that those who are aware of the differences manifested by history are somewhat more likely to be tolerant of the differences they see around them,” therefore the study of sexuality provides the building blocks for a democracy in which all subjects are given a voice and the freedom to choose (256).

 

 
By putting her letter out in the public for all to read, the Duke University porn star was attempting to achieve a similar impact. Using her identity as an educated, well-versed student on one hand, and a confident porn star on the other, she deconstructs what we thought were “given” categories to show that they are, and should be, malleable in practice. Like Nussbaum and Gudorf, she suggests that Western society learn to move beyond the active/passive, heterosexual/homosexual, regular/irregular dimorphisms which have too strong “a bearing on who we are as people -- as good people or bad people” (Lauren). The new polymorphic paradigm, seen as early as in the work of Freud, moves away from the unrealistic confines of the dimorphic structure as “a way of accounting for the sexual categories present at a particular moment in history…and for the sexual options available in a given setting to the individual” (Connell 280). In acknowledging the illimitability of sexuality and sexual identities, the traditional labeling of “good” and “bad” sexuality becomes obsolete. As such, the polymorphic paradigm allows oppressed subjects to take part in their own self-definition and representation, to actively participate in their own social, political and sexual futures.

 





Bibliography
Lauren A. " I'M THE DUKE UNIVERSITY FRESHMAN PORN STAR AND FOR THE FIRST TIME I'M TELLING THE STORY IN MY WORDS." XoJanecom RSS. 21 Feb. 2014. 23 Feb. 2014 http://www.xojane.com/sex/duke-university-freshman-porn-star.
 
featured artists: rafael sottolichio, elise wehle, karel vitezlav masek, shea deTar