ethics of collaging

banana milk, 2011

the wooster group, an avant-garde theater group founded in nyc (greenwich village to be exact) during the mid 70's by elizabeth le compte and some others.

they are known for their collage works-- they rework old plays, put actors as well as monitors, sound clippings on stage. the result is precisely that, a performance collage.

in 1981, they staged a work called 'route 1 & 9 (the last act)' in which all the white performers enacted a minstrel show in black face.

this is my response to seeing a clip of that piece:

Art criticism is not parasytic because it is an art form by its own right. All art—whether it be visual, performance, or literature—borrow from predecessors and each other. (Deliberate or unintentional) appropriation is not unusual, if not inevitable.

Question to The Wooster Group: Is this Okay?

Haptic illusion: A discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect through the sense of touch.

Example: You have three containers filled with water of different temperatures: warm, lukewarm, and cold.

1. Leave your hand in the warm water for a few moments, then transfer your hand to the lukewarm one. The lukewarm water will feel cold.

2. Leave your hand in the cold water for a few moments, then transfer your hand to the lukewarm one. This time the same lukewarm container will feel warm.

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black of morning, mourning,

the morning sun, the mourning son,

the morning son, the mourning sun.

I took some artistic license.

I hesitate to say this, but I identify. I identify with the color black as well as the cultural blackness.

I was watching Leonardo DiCaprio, my childhood dream boy, play the handsome man that he is in Blood Diamond. I watched people cut off other people’s hands, fire off machine guns and flash giant machetes, pile up bloody corpses in heaps, all for some little things that would become some girl’s best friend, somewhere in some nice safe place faraway from Africa. I was watching; it was dramatic, sad, atrocious, and then I started crying. I felt sorry for myself, home on a Friday night watching a movie by myself in the living room littered with empty beer cans, wondering why he had left me.

Picasso called the years 1907 to 1909 his “periode nègre” (black period) or African period. “Picasso never copied African art,” says Marilyn Martin, curator of the Iziko South African National Gallery. “He took its point of view to express his own art. […] He creates a metamorphosis in which he creates something phenomenal and new.”

Steve Jobs was an innovative genius. He did what no one had done before. He took these crazy ideas and turned them into reality. We miss you, Steve.

Hide yo kids, hide yo wife

U don have to come n confess, we lookin fo u.

We gon find u, we gon find u,

so u kin run n tell dat, run n tell dat,

run n tell dat, run n tell that,

homeboy, home, home, homeboy.

If you exist and make money in a culture that is obviously living off a third world people, you must be racist.

Optical illusion: one and the same color can perform many different roles, according to changing neighbors and changing conditions.

Example: A green piece of paper placed on a large blue background appears light green, whereas the same green paper of the same size placed on a large yellow background appears dark green.

A memory from prep school: one time after summer vacation, the guitar-playing, weed-smoking, reggae-listening white guy came to the first day of classes with dreadlocks. Everyone thought it was awesome, except for the black kids, especially the one from Jamaica. They didn’t think it was right. What would he know about Rasta?

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When I was little, there was an old man who sometimes set up outside my school to sell baby chicks from a cardboard box. After school, all of us would gather around that box full of little chirping fur balls. We always asked the man how much each one was, even though we knew exactly how much. No one ever bought any because we were told that they were sick and will die in a few days anyway, plus no one wants a dirty animal inside the house. Who’s going to feed it and clean up the mess? Whenever the chicken man came by, we would wait for our parents by watching the things squirm around and flap their undeveloped wings in the crowded container. When our parents finally came,  we spent another few minutes begging them to let us take just one home, but failed each time. We each left dejected, looking longingly behind us at the cute things we will never be able to have.

One day, as my friends watched with gaping mouths and my heart pounding, I asked the chicken man for two restless ones. He plucked them up and placed them in a small paper box, I handed over the money, and proudly seized my new prize, without permission, without having thought about where I was going to put them.

Sources:

Books/articles:

Albers, Joseph. Interaction of Color. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Meldrum, Andrew. “Stealing Beauty.” The Guardian. 14 Mar. 2006. Web. 29 Oct. 2011. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/mar/15/art>.

Shewey, Don. “Elizabeth Le Compte’s Last Stand?” donshewey.com. Web. 29 Oct. 2011. < http://donshewey.com/theater_articles/wooster_route1&9.html>.

Other:

Craig’s List ads.

Lyrics from The Gregory Brothers’ “Bed Intruder Song” made mostly from Antoine Dodson’s interview from the news.

Spin on a comment made by a classmate in a seminar.

True events.

Personal memories/pure fabrications.