TINY GEMS

Or, a few thoughts on art, privilege, and disability:

This evening I went to an opening at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art, site of Andy Warhol’s first major show, and currently the home of one of my little bro’s weird little videos about, umm, videos. “We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes,” a 3-minute split-screen speculation on the agency of the viewer and the viewed in the contemporary horror film. Or something like that. Seeing my brother’s work in a major gallery was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, the fourth-class citizen video artists who submitted their work through an “open call” last spring were relegated to the ICA’s poorly-designed upstairs video corner, crowds of wine-drinking minglers standing in front of it and nary a chair in site. The main gallery was devoted to “Ensemble,” an exhibition of sound-making sculpture. Some of it was pretty okay:

I must confess a preference for soft sounds and melodies, clinks and blips and chimes that soothe my often frazzled nerves, especially amongst a crowd of ferociously-networking gallery-goers. Unfortunately, melodic, soft pieces like this one (ceramic bowls floating and periodically clinking together in a blue kiddie pool) were drowned out by the many attention-seeking works that could be recognized by their attempts to dominate the room. As I used to say back when I was a frustrated keyboardist in a hardcore band, this was “the sound of boys jerking off,” the artistic equivalent of masturbation. Standing in the middle of the floor was an innocent-enough-looking trash can, a place Oscar the Grouch would call home. Whenever an unsuspecting guest lifted the lid, a loud siren noise echoed through the gallery, piercing and shocking and — every single time — sending my heart the first signs of a tachycardia attack, that first awful jump that usually means, “I’m going to the ER tonite.”

Let me say it one more time: I hate surprises! They only remind me of how shitty it is to live in a world that doesn’t seem to realize that a lot of its people (people with serious heart conditions, for example) exist. I stood in a corner scowling while people took pictures of their friends and families holding the lid of the screaming trash can, staring down into its abyss and laughing. “Is it so wrong,” I asked MT, “that every time someone opens it I want to grab them by the neck and strangle them?”

Eventually he suggested that I go upstairs. I went and had a beer and plotted my revenge.