Chinati Open House Weekend '09, Marfa, TX

Another great weekend in the tiny town in a big landscape.

Attendance was the lowest I think I've seen since Open House '03; good in some ways, not in others. Speculation was, it resulted from the cutbacks on perqs for artists (esp. in '08), combined with the ongoing "recession."

The Book Company's given up some space, but it still has the gallery, which was occupied by a great show of small press books. The Pizza Foundation was open again. And there's a new "Shade Structure" next to the RR tracks; now you can stay cool while chewing Shark, plus the structure served as a concert venue.

Chinati's programs centered on the re-opening of Donald Judd's freestanding works in concrete.

Apart from Chinati's and the Judd Foundation's more or less permanent installations, the art generally struck me as somewhat less spectacular this year than in some past; but then, I didn't see everything.

But I'd like to mention a couple of items. Perhaps most interesting to me was the free Dan Deacon concert. As the concert began, the crowd was tightly packed around Deacon's performance area, which was level with the crowd. Here's his opening assay, as best I can transcribe it (video here):

Everyone raise your right hand. Now ever so slowly, start raising our index finger straight up in the air, pointing straight up. And now we'll slowly start bending at the wrist, so our finger that was pointing proudly up at the heavens is pointing down to the ground [audience laughs {picture the gesture}]. Now let's put our left foot a little bit in front of our right foot, and start bobbing up and down at the knees, that's good. Now let's slowly bend at the knees, taking one knee down to the ground, really slowly. Now let's look around the space and find someone who's not doing this [audience roars]. But that's ok; don't be afraid! You've made a choice to remain different and that's alright. But now let's point directly at somebody who's not doing this, point directly at them [audience roars again]. We're not judging them in any capacity [audience laughs]. We're just pointing right at their mouth. Now open up the palm of your hand, look at the palm of your hand. Now back at their mouth. Now back at the palm of your hand. Now back at their mouth, where your eyes will stay as your hand moves closer and closer to your own mouth. Closer and closer still until you give your hand a kiss while looking at that mouth. Now, don't turn away, don't stop looking at that same person but reach and put that kiss on someone else's face. Plant it right there; then put your hands on the ground, and let's start to dance, let's do it.

At this point, the music began in earnest.

Deacon clearly raised the possibility of ostracizing those who don't go along with the crowd's relatively blind obedience to at least initially nonsensical directions. If my transcription is correct, the few who don't go along not only get singled out and pointed at but also get it rubbed in their faces that they're not being kissed and everyone else is – a relatively mild form of ostracization, but for some of us, sufficient perhaps to stir a few pangs. The initial, "rock concert" context evidently provides a set of conditions in which the crowd is prepared to suspend whatever autonomy they might otherwise exercise and collaborate with a leader in order to achieve their own entertainment – and they know not what all else. Though it was all in fun, there were a number of moments at which things could have taken, or indeed did take, a disturbing turn.

The music was techno-jungle, a driving droning, mostly in major scales, and was accompanied visually by goofy, strobe-flashing skulls and video featuring crisply geometric, crudely amorphous, or Wolfram-esquely psychedelic patterns. To me, the visuals though fitting seemed unspectacular, at least by contemporary standards, and I wondered if they rather served as part of the contextual "concert" set-up for the relational experiments that were to transpire.

Deacon suggested more than once that people should put their cameras away, presumably because they tend to remove the shooter from emotional immersion in the action.

In the next exercise, Deacon directed the crowd to form a large circle and designated two team leaders who selected others, who in turn selected others, all to compete in a dance contest. Clearly, for a good and unforgettable time, nothing beats actually DIY'ing it, esp. in front of a lot of other people. In the next experiment, Deacon selected one fellow from the crowd and directed everyone else to mimic him in a giant "Simon Says," thus establishing that the crowd would blindly obey not just Deacon but anyone he might designate. The scene was distinctly tribal; the video here gives a sense of that.

In the next exercise, Deacon directed the crowd to form a human tunnel, with people at the back end running through it to add themselves to the tunnel at the front, so as to gradually extend the tunnel out the front of the Shade Structure and across the street to a building housing the Judd Foundation on the other side. As this action played out, the street was obstructed. A car pulled up, blocked; then two more with cops and flashing lights – though as I understand, Marfa only has one police officer; but presumably they'd mustered others from surrounding towns (the nearest being a half hour away).

It was a demonstration of the power of the crowd, for good or ill, even against the police; though the latter seemed merely amused, if not actually complicit.

The concert functioned as a participatory, relational art performance very much concerned with how individuals and perhaps esp. crowds react when under certain conditions directed to carry out certain protocols. Most of the attendees had a fun, perhaps heart-warming or even uplifting experience; for me, the implications seemed a bit more complex and even ambivalent. Organized into concerted effort, we're all but invincible; but we also have a disturbing proclivity to suspend not just our disbelief but our critical faculties, and the collective can be deployed to discourage independence.

I also liked Adam Bork's installation (right), at El Cosmico; more pics and vidis of all that starting here.

You can find more visuals of more works, and links to more info, starting here.

The Food Shark

If you're going to Marfa for Open House this year, keep your eye out for my friend Adam Bork, video artist and alt-rock musician, and for his Food Shark, which serves the best falafel in town. Somebody told me he's getting famous.