New from Kalup Linzy

Hilarious, brilliant.

Kalup Linzy's "Keys to Our Heart"

He's got 'em.

This video (24:06 min.; 2008) was commissioned by Prospect.1 New Orleans and was also shown at the Fusebox Festival. The production is in a lush, vintage-y black and white and seems more polished than Linzy's earlier work; perhaps he's gotten comfortable that by now we know better than to take his work at face value.

Keys is an example of what I might call "quasi-narrative." There's a clear plot line, but various aspects of the piece subvert any "willing suspension of disbelief" or other inclination to relate to the piece as a conventional story.

The plot involves two entangled love triangles. Linzy, a black male, plays Lily, a lesbian with a jaded world-view. She and Dina (also black) are best friends who had sex once long ago. Now Dina has a boyfriend, John Jay (white or mixed), who treats her well. But Dina's been rebuffing him, sexually and otherwise; she and Lily exult in being "bitches." Lily advises the suffering John Jay that Dina will never love him unless he starts treating her badly, acting like an "asshole." John Jay distrusts Lily, but her words ring true. He confides in Sally Sue (white), who's friends with all of them. Sally Sue defends Dina to John Jay, and also goes to Dina to warn her that she could lose him. Dina starts to take Sally Sue's warning to heart, but while dithering, allows herself to be seduced into having sex with Lily again. Meanwhile, John Jay decides to give up on Dina and starts wooing Sally Sue. Dina resolves to approach John Jay to try to reconcile, but accidentally catches him having sex with Sally Sue. Lily then tricks the other three characters into meeting for a showdown in which Dina is confronted with the fact of John Jay's new relationship and Lily reveals that she and Dina have had sex twice and proclaims her love for Dina. Dina writes John an empathetic letter acknowledging her failure to appreciate him and seeking reconciliation. John Jay writes an empathetic letter back suggesting she'd probably be happier in a relationship with Lily.

As in much or most of his other work, in Keys Linzy himself plays one of the lead female roles and dubs in the voices of all the characters. The lines are spoken excessively slowly and enunciated excessively clearly, with an intonation that's at once overdramatic yet declamatory and slightly dead; and the voices themselves, other than Linzy/Lily's, sound completely unnatural. The weirdness of the dubbing lends an air of farce or surreality. (Trailer below; this is not the whole piece.)



Linzy's script is funny – my non-art-pro girlfriend LoL'd – and also odd. Most of the dialogue consists in the characters' explicating their own or others' inner motivations with more fluency than Woody Allen, in Oprah-esque pop psychological terms. And apart from a few clichés that are heavily repeated throughout the piece (discussed below), the characters' lines sometimes seem oddly literal or direct, sometimes almost robotic – e.g., here's John Jay, initiating his seduction of Sally Sue (in Linzy's unnaturally low, overly-enunciated voice): "Since you're single and have no boyfriend, I thought a late lunch with a male friend would serve you well."

The metaphor of "the key(s)" to [one or more persons'] "heart(s)" is used liberally throughout the script, and the characters are repeatedly referred to in terms of two, contrasting sets of stock types, one positive and one negative. Sally Sue announces the positive set: Lily is the "Queen," Dina is the "Princess," John Jay is a "good man," and Sally Sue is the "Sweetheart." Lily/Linzy proclaims the characters' negative identities: she and Dina are "Bitches," Sally Sue is the "Slut," and John Jay the "Queen of Assholes."

And the characters are often presented in an exaggerated, parodic style, as if intended to represent extremes of good and evil. But both sets of labels are shown to be over-simplifications. "Queen" Lily is played by an apparent drag queen – is Linzy sending up these stereotypes while at the same time reminding us of the extent to which they're often true – though perhaps not in the way we expected? In fact, the characters are neither good nor evil; the actions of all seem at bottom determined by self-interest, but the characters all also show compassion for their friends. Lily's manner of speaking generally seems the bitchiest, but the truths she delivers prove helpful to all.

The heavy-handed repetition of stereotypic labels and of the "keys" motif may in part be a reference to old soap opera scripts. Another soap opera-ish element in Keys is the use of stock dramatic or cinematic devices. These include the climactic scene in which all characters are brought together by Lily for the all-is-revealed! showdown. As usual in soaps, however, it turns out that all was not actually revealed; further insight comes through subsequent segments that deploy the stock device in which we see a character write a letter while we hear it read in voiceover – and one suspects any sequel would offer still further surprises. And then, of course, there's the soap-y organ music.

The lovingly detailed costumes and certain aspects of the sets invoke the 50's, while most of the music is Depression-era (the piece opens with Lily lip-syncing to a delightful 1930's recording by Lil Johnson of Get 'Em From the Peanut Man (Hot Nuts) (more on that below). And in one brief scene, as a fully-suited John Jay exits a door, Linzy speeds up the footage, giving it a Chaplin-esque look I associate with the 1920's.

The vintage accoutrements throw into relief aspects of the piece that may be common enough in recent decades but seem weird within the vintage-y frame:

• As mentioned, the characters spend much of their time pop psychologizing.

• The dialogue is larded with "foul" language in quantities difficult to imagine in anything other than a modern production (bitch, pussy, bullshit, fuck, etc.) – esp. coming from characters wearing ties or white gloves. The grammar's also off, in "modern" ways.

• One scene shows doggy-style sex in the kitchen; and no qualms are suffered regarding extramarital sex.

• The casting seems "color blind"; and miscegenation is a total non-issue.

• An open lesbian, played by a transvestite, seduces a repressed lesbian. Lesbianism per se and the concept of committed, long-term lesbian relationships are accepted non-issues.

At the same time, some of these aspects (e.g., the psychobabble, perhaps the color-blind casting, and the foul language – how long has Southpark been on?) are themselves already verging on cliché.

Linzy's mash-up of vintages operates to distance us from the conventionalities in which we're immersed today. The soap-opera and vintage frames give us poke and a wink, prompting us both to laugh and to reflect not so much on what we've inherited from earlier decades as on what we've done with it lately.

At bottom, however, part of what makes this piece so appealing is that, even if Linzy's intentions are parodic, his work is full of love. The weird or parodic aspects do distance us from the characters and their story, but one strongly suspects that Linzy feels genuine affection not only for the vintage and soap opera elements he deploys but also for pop psychology, foul language, color-blindness, etc., as well as people in general. To the extent Keys is parody, it seems to be parodying our present as well as old soaps, but it also seems to be loving both.

What ARE the keys to our hearts? We hear truth in Sally Sue's sentiment that "if you want to have a sweetheart, you have to have a heart that is sweet." Or do you? One suspects John Jay's suggestion is correct that the two "bitches," Lily and Dina, hold the keys to one another's hearts; sweetness may be key for John Jay and Sally Sue but not for Lily and Dina. And compatible sexual orientation proves the sine qua non for all.

There's been some interesting confusion in writings about this piece regarding the title. Is it key to our hearts, keys to our hearts, or keys to our heart? The last is correct, suggesting that perhaps we all share one great heart, but the key for each of us is unique: another cliché we can both smile at and appreciate.

Keys may also be an example of a trend I've observed in which artists import or export material from the past into the present or vice versa, in the process transforming both. I recently came across Dieter Roelstraete's discussions of a "historiographic turn" in art (see e-flux here, citing Mark Godfrey’s essay “The Artist as Historian,” published in [e-flux?] in October 120 (2007), and here). I was excited to find Roelstraete's articles, found them brilliant, and think he nails many important points.

But Roelstraete laments "contemporary art’s inability 'to grasp or even look at the present, much less to excavate the future,'” and adds, "our inability to . . . imagine the future seems structurally linked with the enthusiasm shared by so many artists for digging up various obscure odds and ends dating from a more or less remote, unknowable past—and the more unknowable the past in question, the deeper the pathological dimension of this melancholy, retrospective gaze."

Much of the video and other new media-based work I've seen in recent years seems to be within or relate to this historiographic trend, e.g. (you may have to search the pages at the following links for the artist's name), Matthew Barney (Drawing Restraint 13), Michael Bell-Smith (Battleship Potemkin), Guy Ben Ner (Berkeley's Island), Matt Marello (Sitcoms), Andrea Fraser (her "museum" pieces, e.g., here), Simon Martin (Wednesday Afternoon and Carlton), Steve Reinke (Hobbit Love is the Greatest Love), Laura Paperina (Joseph Kosuth versus Matthew Barney, et al. {and keep clicking "next" for a while}), R. Luke DuBois (State of the Union Address, and keep clicking next for a while), Airan Kang (and keep clicking next for a while), Shana Moulton (her Whispering Pines series), and Erica Eyres (The Male Epidemic).

I believe at least some of these artists are in fact using the past to illuminate the present, in the hope of improving the future. Maybe not an excavation of the future; maybe just an invitation to all of us to help create it in a more conscious way.
____________

Lyrics to Get 'Em From the Peanut Man (Hot Nuts)
Recorded by Lil Johnson
Probably by Georgia White
Recording of March 4, 1936; from Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order, Vol. 1 (1929-1936) (Document DOCD-5307).

Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy my nuts?
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, I've got nuts for sale
Selling one for five, two for ten,
If you buy 'em once, you'll buy 'em again
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, you buy 'em from the peanut man

Nuts, hot nuts, anybody here want to buy my nuts?
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, I've got nuts for sale
They tell me your nuts is mighty fine,
But I bet your nuts isn't hot as mine
Sellin' nuts, hot nuts, you buy 'em from the peanut man

* * * * *

More here.

UPDATE: Just found a great interview of Linzy at, of course, Interview, by Chan Marshall. Linzy names Meryl Streep, Lynn Whitfield, Kim Wayans, and Ashton Kutcher as actors he'd like to work with, then says, "I’m trying to imagine them in the context of my work, which is a little difficult. But . . . [s]ometimes people are good-enough actors that they can transform themselves into something kind of kitschy." The new John Waters? Later he mentions, "I definitely want to do a [soap-ish] TV series at some point." YEAH!

Fusebox: A Few More Faves, and a Temporary Conclusion

Grub, by tEEth, was terrific, and Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me, by Cupola Bobber, was magical. The Practice Practice Practice show at Lora Reynolds Gallery, curated by Michael Smith and Jay Sanders, includes nearly three hours of video plus lots of other work. A performance by the multi-talented Reggie Watts was hilarious and musically amazing (plus he has the best hair since Sideshow Bob). And I'm still excited about No Dice by Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

During 7 days, I attended 27 productions (some more than once, and some distinctly participatory), averaging close to 5 per day, plus did fair amounts of partying and inter-city driving. But those who created and organized what I saw worked a heck of a lot harder, overcoming many last-minute challenges, full details of which may never be generally known. Many thanks to all of them, especially Artistic Director Ron Berry, for a fabulous festival and for making it possible for me to be there! It was a tremendous learning experience for me on many levels, and I had a fantastic time.

If you participated in Rotozaza's GuruGuru, you'll remember "Dicky."

Money and God just happened to be standing around in my room at testsite, which, by the way, also housed a truly fascinating exhibit by Justin Boyd and Nick Tosches – another fave.

I may write more about No Dice, GuruGuru, and/or Kalup Linzy's Keys to Our Heart (see also my previous posts on Fusebox).

UPDATE: You can find my longer descriptions/discussions of Nature Theater's No Dice here and of Kalup Linzy's Keys here.

Fusebox Schedule Plus a Few Faves So Far

The Schedule. I made a color-coded schedule designed to help me see as many different works as possible, taking into account some of my own time constraints. It's been suggested it might be helpful to share it; here it is. I'm planning to go to the yellow-highlighted items. (I'd have highlighted more "Maxi Geil!" except I happen to have seen more of Guy Richards Smit's work before than I have most of the other artists, so I opted for work less known to me.)

Some Faves So Far. This is in haste, so I'll mostly just quote the Fusebox website.

GuruGuru (2009) by Rotozaza:

Conceived and created by Ant Hampton, with Joji Koyama and Isambard Khroustalio.

Five participants (each receiving different instructions via their earpieces) talk together with a televised character whose role flicks uncannily between spiritual and marketing guru. Revelling in the absurdities of marketing technique and group therapy, Hampton, Koyama and Khroustaliov reverse the awkward history of consumer research by allowing their audience to create their own animated therapist – by means of a focus group!

Unleashing what Ernest Dichter called 'the secret self of the consumer' and allowing it to run about perhaps a little too freely, GuruGuru also explores the amusing yet complex notion of ‘wearing’ opinions and emotional reactions as one might a choice of clothes: as with 'Etiquette' (Rotozaza's earlier show in the Autoteatro series), audience members find themselves falling into a strange kind of dialogue by simply following pre-recorded instructions as to what to say and do.

GuruGuru (round-and-round in Japanese) is created by Ant Hampton in collaboration with acclaimed film-maker / animation artist Joji Koyama, and longtime collaborator Isambard Khroustaliov (Sam Britton - musician, electronic composer and one half of the group Icarus.)

More here, where you can make a reservation, which is recommended. (UPDATE: I've posted a more in-depth discussion of GuruGuru here.)

Keys to Our Heart, 24:18 min. (2008) by Kalup Linzy:

. . . a black-and-white narrative in which the artist stars as a misanthropic grande dame who dispenses advice to a trio of troubled young lovers. Linzy, who performs all of the characters' dialogue, shot and directed Keys To Our Heart in the style of a Hollywood Melodrama, which was created for Prospect.1 New Orleans in 2008.

Let me just add, watch out for aspects of this piece that are odd or incongruous with expectations created by his use of vintage visuals and clichéd cinematic devices. (UPDATE: I've posted a more in-depth discussion of Keys here.)

And I have to mention pink, though by the time you read this, it'll be over in Austin (but I think they tour). I understand the C.E.O. is Jaclyn Pryor.

[pink unplugged] is both a real-life courier service and an interactive, site-specific art installation.

Visitors are invited to visit pink’s temporary love [note] factory set up along Austin's City Hall plaza, where they can type a love note to someone in Austin. Notes are bottled on site by pink’s love factory workers and delivered by bicycle by pink’s love couriers anywhere in the city. pink [unplugged] celebrates not only human connectivity but human power. The factory is powered entirely by human & bicycle-generated energy.

[Click on the images for larger versions.] Among pink's other charming aspects, note-typers could use the hotel-desk-style bell to signal various matters including a request for help with inspiration.

UPDATE: You can see more visuals of pink here. I'd also like to mention a few more faves I've seen since this was first posted: Paul Villinski's Emergency Response Studio (2008), érection by Pierre Rigal and Aurélien Bory, and The Method Gun by Rude Mechs.

"THE PROGRAM": In the Code

UPDATE: New, much more detailed post here; although as of this addition, I haven't yet had a chance to add images to the new post.

As you may know, the Video Association of Dallas was the first in TX to show video art by Michel Auder, Matthew Barney, Paul Chan, Harun Farocki, Graffiti Research Lab, William Kentridge, Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist, Martha Rosler, and Bill Viola, among many others.

The Video Association's Dallas Video Festival is now dividing into two parts. This year for the first time, most of the video- and other media-based art you might normally find in museums or galleries will be presented in a separate, expanded series of exhibitions at Conduit Gallery. The rest of the Fest, including documentaries and other venerable varieties of video, will be presented in October.

The new, video art + other media-based art exhibition series to be shown at Conduit, called THE PROGRAM, starts July 26: 5 shows over 5 weeks, with openings on 5 consecutive Sat. nites, after-parties, etc. etc. Co-curated by me, Charles Dee Mitchell, and Bart Weiss.

Where else can you find this much exciting, recent video art and other media-based art by internationally-recognized artists -- esp. on our near-null budget? (I certainly hope never to work this hard again for negative income.)

This is not a complete listing, and all programming remains subject to change:

Guy Ben-Ner's Moby Dick and his latest, Stealing Beauty (see Postmasters gallery).

John Bock's latest, The Palms (see Anton Kern gallery).

Dena DeCola + Karin E. Wandner's five more minutes (see the Video Data Bank).

Matthew Barney's latest, Drawing Restraint 13 (see Barney's DR site or Gladstone Gallery).

Michael Bell-Smith, t.b.d. (see Foxy Production or and/or gallery).

eteam: with luck, something re- their Rhizome commission proposal, Second Life Dumpster (see their commission proposal site). I personally also loved 1.1 Acre Flat Screen, 'though it's not looking like we'll be able to show it, but you can view it on their website; just click on "videos" and scroll on what opens.

Nathalie Djurberg: her Camels Drink Water, which debut'd at Art Basel Miami just last year, and, I hope, one or more other works (see Zach Feuer Gallery). I'm pretty sure, 200 yrs. from now, if you search for what might help you both survive and forgive humanity, Djurberg's work will pop.

John Michael Boling + Javier Morales (see their site at http://www.gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com).

Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung's animations featuring Al Gore as a polar bear, his Nobel around his neck, deploying solar panels against a BBQ'ing Bush (see Postmasters and Hung's site).

Cao Fei: knock on wood, her Second Life "documentary," iMirror (see Lombard-Freid Projects), which showed at the Venice Biennale, this year, and her newest piece, RMB City.

Guthrie Lonergan: net art from a favorite New Museum alum (see his site).

Shana Moulton's work takes you back to everything you thought you hated about the 80's but now "pine" for (see Country Club gallery).

Tom Moody: appealing and intriguing shorts from a former Dallasite who's shown around the world (see his site).

Meiro Koizumi's latest, The Human Opera. If I say he's the new M. Barney, that's just shorthand for, i.m.h.o., you need to see his work -- it's going to come up again (see Nicole Klagsbrun gallery).

Matt Marello: Marello greenscreens himself into the horror flick that made Charles Dee Mitchell want to be an art writer; plus, Friedrich Nietsche converses with Hogan's Heroes.

Yang Fudong's An Estranged Paradise. This wonderful early piece illumines the work he's made since (see Marian Goodman Gallery).

Yves Netzhammer: evocative 3-D animation from one of my faves from the '07 Venice Biennial (see Galerie Anita Beckers).

Jon Pylypchuk's animations with hotdogs -- not even bacon is better (see Friedrich Petzel Gallery).

Steve Reinke's Hobbit Love is the Greatest Love. Yes, he actually makes it work (see Video Data Bank).

Treewave (Paul Slocum's band) performs live (see his Tree Wave page, Dunn and Brown Contemporary, or and/or gallery).

Ryan Trecartin: A Family Finds Entertainment and Tommy Chat Just E-mailed Me. He may seem hallucino-gen-Y'd, he may even be really fun; he's also profound (see Elizabeth Dee).

Kalup Linzy's Melody Set Me Free and Ride to da Club, both totally smart + fun (see Taxter & Spengemann gallery).

Rick Silva, a.k.a. Abe Linkoln, + jimpunk + Mr. Tamale: a compilation from Triptych TV (also check outAbe + Mo Sing the Blogs: e.g., one blogger's daily psychotropic dosage, à la metal -- and more {here's Rick's site; I also love jimpunk's}).

Clemens Von Wedermeyer: compelling work from one of Europe's stars (see Galerie Jocelyn Wolff).

The main venue for THE PROGRAM will be Conduit Gallery in the Design District, where lots of great galleries are now located (go here for lists by neighborhood with url's, addresses, etc.); and our opening nite, Sat., July 26, will also be "gallery walk" nite in the Design District. The gallery walk hours will be 5-8 pm. We expect to open THE PROGRAM with Matthew Barney's new video, although that's not set in stone, and with Paul Slocum's performance starting around the time the gallery walk winds up (plan to end up back at Conduit).

Then, for our after-party that nite . . . remember Apples in Stereo, whose lead appeared on The Colbert Report with his paean to Stephen? And the inestimable Danette Dufilho, Asst. Dir. at Conduit and Dir. of the Project Room there? Well, her hubby, John Dufilho (of Deathray Davies fame), plays drums in the Apples, and the Apples are playing Big D that very nite, at one of our fave venues, Sons of Hermann Hall, starting after Paul's performance. And strictly betw. us, the Apples might show up at Conduit for Paul's show; and we might be handing out coupons for a discount to get into the show at Sons . . .

And, believe it or not, there's more spectacular stuff in the works! As well as a panel discussion at the Dallas Museum of Art on Sun., August 10 at 1:30 pm and evening screenings in Fort Worth on August 5 and 12. I'll post more details about the schedule as they're firmed up.

I've been working really hard on this, so pls cancel any and all conflicting oblgs, ink us in for the 5 consecutive Sat. nites starting July 26 plus, + tell your friends. (And by the way, if you can't make the opening nites, the shows will remain on exhibit or available for viewing until it's time to install the next week's work.)

Thanks of course to the artists, galleries, and others already mentioned above. I'd like also to go ahead and thank Suzanne Weaver at the DMA for her advice to me over the years, which greatly helped me educate myself, as well as for her support in arranging for our panel discussion to take place at the DMA; the folks at Electronic Art Intermix (esp. Josh Kline), whose advice and screening room have also been invaluable to me; Paul Slocum, who has also generously shared his advice, esp. regarding new media artists; Danette Dufilho and Nancy Whitenack at Conduit, not only for providing us a great space for free but also for their advice, time, and effort in many areas, all of which have been and will continue to be essential to bringing this thing off; volunteers such as LeeAnn Harrington and Emily Ewbank; my co-curators, Bart Weiss and Charles Dee Mitchell, from whom I've also learned so much; and last but not least, our presenting organization, the Video Association of Dallas, which has for over twenty years been one of the foremost proponents of video as a creative medium (please join and support it!).

Until I do a new post based on more definite info, check back here 'cause it's easier for me to just update this post.