Multiple Occupancy: Eleanor Antin’s Selves @ ICA

There was so much to this exhibition that I have to go back to really take it all in. One piece really struck me during this visit.

This piece was painful for me to sit through. I couldn’t make it through the whole thing, I came into the room around the end and stayed for the beginning, so I think I missed a good chunk of the middle. Antin sits almost facing the camera, seemingly peering into a mirror in the distance. From what you can tell, she is wearing only a see-through bra, and seems to be going through her nighttime beauty regime before bed – she washes her face, applies a face cream, musses with her hair, poses, talks to herself, and takes drags from a cigarette in between prepping her skin for sleep.

The piece is in stark black-and-white, and completely silent. The only sound I could hear was the sound of the Nathalie Djurberg exhibition softly in the distance. The effect is eerie, as if you are the mirror image Antin is staring into. When she speaks to herself, your brain fills in the blanks. I heard my own insecurities while watching her eyes pensively scan the mirror/camera and her mouth mumble something inaudible.

I also found myself thinking how gorgeous she looked like this, taking off all of her make-up and looking so vulnerable. I noticed how she looked like so many women I recognized from family pictures taken during the 70s. At one point, she stands, removes her bra and waits a moment, just inspecting her image, before putting on a blouse and trying on different poses, as if she were in a department store changing room. I really identified with this one, but it made me wonder how a man might have responded to the same video.

Rashaun Mitchell, Stephin Merritt + Ali Naschke-Messing: PERFORMANCE @ ICA

Rashaun Mitchell, Stephin Merritt + Ali Naschke-Messing: PERFORMANCE @ ICA

January 25, 2014 

Begun during a two-week residency at the ICA in the summer of 2013, PERFORMANCE is inspired by a quote from Richard Avedon: “We all perform. It’s what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It’s a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we’d like to be.”

In a sneak preview in July (under the working title Romance Study #1) Mitchell’s virtuosic choreography, live music from singer-songwriter Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, and Naschke-Messing’s richly glowing installation combined to celebrate the mystery of performance, individualism, wit, musicality, fancy, and the absurd. — http://www.icaboston.org/performance/co-lab/PERFORMANCE/

Watching this performance brought me back to my very first “welcome to art school moment,” when I found myself in a five-hour, improv performance art class. I say “found myself” like I had nothing to do with the arrangement, but really I chose this situation because I felt like being adventurous. I loved performing in plays in high school, but this was some next level shit. I loathed every self-conscious second of being a tree, of mirroring strangers, of wiggling around like birdshit falling from the sky.

Amazingly though, despite how horrified I was to put my body through that experience, I’ve recently realized what an appreciation it gave me for dance and dancers, and the incredibly beautiful gestures they can create with their bodies.

For me, the most beautiful part of the performance was the end, when Stephin Merritt appeared outside of the huge auditorium window leading a procession of dancers, who were blowing bubbles in a trail behind him.  The bubbles froze and burst in the air, and the frozen shards dropped like lead balloons. Merritt singing “I Die” and plucking on his ukelele was barely audible from outside, while inside was perfectly still and quiet. Merritt and the dancers were lit by moonlight outside, and the lights were off in the auditorium. As the small parade shuffled off out of eyesight to the left, a brightly-lit cruise ship in the waterfront floated out of sight to the right at almost the exact same moment, leaving everything dark inside and outside. The timing was so perfect it seemed like it had to have been planned that way, but it couldn’t have been. I thought it was interesting that the last time they had performed this, it was during the summer residency, so the bubbles freezing like that was something brand new in this performance.

After the performance, there was a Q&A with the collaborators and the dancers, all of whom gave profound insight into the process of collaboration, but the take-away was how dry and hilarious Stephin Merritt is. His answers were all extremely terse compared to the abstract artspeak of his collaborators.

I did not attempt to shake his hand or say hello because I’m afraid of meeting my idols, but my friend Meg was brave and asked a question: “Did you enjoy the summer residency?” He responded with a perfectly brief “some parts better than others.”

WITNESS, LaToya Ruby Frazier @ICA Boston

This was a powerful show. I’m really inspired by LaToya Ruby Frazier after seeing this, knowing that she started much of this work as a teenager and is such a powerhouse at only 30. Basically, she makes me want to step up my game.

Frazier’s upbringing in Braddock, Pennsylvania, was imprinted by the drastic downsizing of the Pittsburgh-area town’s Edgar Thomson Steel Works in the early 80s that prompted many residents to flee. Homes and businesses were abandoned, infrastructure and amenities crumbled, the national crack epidemic took hold, and urban families found themselves subject to widespread vilification. … Like many, Frazier believes industrial pollution has sickened a disproportional number of Braddock residents. She suffers from lupus, her mother has cancer and a neurological disorder, and Grandma Ruby died of complications related to pancreatic cancer.

— http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/LaToya_Ruby_Frazier/

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LaToya Ruby Frazier, “Grandma Ruby Smoking Pall Malls”, 2011

Her work is intensely personal and specifically deals with the issues her hometown faces, but it speaks to issues of working class poverty and lack of healthcare that are widespread across the country. I found it easy to see my family in her family.

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LaToya Ruby Frazier, Self-Portrait (United States Steel), Digital Video Transfer to DVD
Color, Sound, 3:28 Minutes[source]

liked this video piece, a self-portrait where Frazier presents herself breathing in and out deeply as footage of the Steel Mill shows gaseous emissions pouring into the air of Braddock. Compositionally, the steel mill dominates the image; it’s influence on Frazier, her home, her family, and her health is huge. I liked the relationship between this piece and the photograph of Frazier’s grandmother smoking in her living room, which were installed on opposite sides of a wall within the gallery. Both images concentrate on respiration, and breathing in these toxic chemicals. I connected with the theme of respiration and sickness in these pieces, thinking about my father’s cancer.

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DETOX (Braddock U.P.M.C.), 2011, Digital Video Transfer to DVD, Color, Sound, 22:23 minutes[source]

In DETOX (U.P.M.C.), Frazier documents herself and her mother undergoing an ionic detox footbath. In such a detox, “toxins from the body are released through the pores of the feet… The water is said to change different colors as the initiated electric charge applied pulls all of the toxins from the organs.” (– http://kiffecoco.com/blog/ffecoco.com/2011/02/beauty-in-imperfection-latoya-ruby.html) I feel like it’s worth noting that in Googling that term, all of the highest results contained either the word “sham” or hoax.” The detox session is cut with footage of Frazier’s mother sitting on her bed as Frazier asks her to speak about her illness and her unsparing opinions of what is going on in Braddock. At one point, Frazier situates the camera between her legs, zooming in on the footbath, which at this point is a frothy, orange and green colored slop. From this vantage point, I felt like I was sitting in her chair. I am really interested in the way that Frazier uses personal documentary to bring attention to the corruption in Braddock and the country at large.