John Menick Blog

© Shelly Silver. in complete world, 2008. Video still. Courtesy Shelly Silver

John Menick: Rather than begin with photo or video, I wanted to bring up the third medium What I’m Looking For deals with: the Internet. More specifically, the video uses social networking sites in order to produce its narrative. Could you describe how online personal ads came to occupy such a crucial place in the work?

Shelly Silver: I’m reminded of a quote from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, “I’m really only here to meet people.” How do we, in contemporary life, brush up against, have ‘access’ to, or just plain meet people, especially those outside the circumference of our daily lives? The Internet sets up, within limits, a structure to make connections with people that would be impossible, or at least highly unlikely in three-dimensional space.

I first came across Internet dating sites while doing research for a script for SUICIDE, a feature-length fiction about a crazed filmmaker who projects her desires onto everything and anything around her. I was fascinated by the level of openness and easy intimacy in interactions on the Web, as well as the generosity with personal detail and the specificity of articulated desires. After finishing SUICIDE in the spring of 2003, I started a residency with the LMCC with a project to photograph moments of intimacy in public spaces in lower Manhattan. I went about this in two different ways, the first being traditional street photography. With the second I wanted to find a way to reverse the direction of desire and projection, which typically moves from the photographer to his/her subject.

To do this, I became a ‘parasite’ on an established Internet dating site. My byline read, “I’m looking for people who want to be photographed in public space revealing something of themselves….”

I chose a dating site for several reasons. The site already dealt in the circulation of desire and projection; it already utilized photography — each person ‘advertising’ themselves with a photo or photos, and it was set up to facilitate the movement from virtual to actual space. In many ways the site’s basic premise was the same as mine, even if the final aim was different.

My rules were to only contact people who contacted me first, and to meet and photograph anyone, unless I thought they were dangerous. I tried to have the film’s protagonist mirror this non-judgmental, non-eliminatory process with her seemingly straightforward narration. With her cool, rhythmic voice, I think of her character as a sensual ‘straight man’ with a slightly passive-aggressive bent.

Much of my work functions as a motor for contact between people who are randomly or loosely selected. My initial work is to set up a structure where meetings can take place, as well as fixing a question or subject around which to make contact and exchange.

I think of your project as a reworking of the methodologies used for feature film productions, but unlike scripted narratives, the respondents are given an opportunity to star in a role they devise. They write their own parts, choose their own settings, even frame their own shots. Meanwhile, an invisible, paradoxically passive director anthologizes them into a kind of loose, episodic narrative. What are your thoughts on the roles people chose to play for the camera? Is there anything you could add that was not included in the voice-over? Were there any participants that didn’t make the cut? And yourself? What would you have done, if asked?

I wish I’d been able to be as passive as I wanted to be. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of coaxing necessary. People traditionally expect the director or photographer to ‘tell’ them what to do. In some cases language wasn’t used — as in the refusal of ‘the man with the beautiful neck’ to tell me how he wanted to be photographed. I was thus left to photograph the part of his body that he had left exposed, his fragile neck on that frigid day. A language-heavy interaction was necessary for the ‘man from London’ (let’s call him Frank) who was the only participant who photographed himself. Each photo session was prefaced by a nightly IM discussion:

“What should I do for you tonight?”
“What do you want to do?”
“What do you want to see?”
“What do you want me to see?”

In the end, he’d speak enough clues (the pleasures of shaving, an unusually warm winter evening, a newly purchased shiny blue dildo….) to allow me to ‘direct’ him without truly directing him.

Everyone I photographed was included, but not all of their photographs were included. Many stories were left out. These details may or may not have included the story of the former drug addict-turned-hacker-turned-IT security expert, the self-exposing high powered public official, and the married ex-minister whose professed desire was to photograph naked or semi-dressed women. There were over a hundred people who initially contacted me who dropped out of the project. One reason given was unhappiness at my statement:

“No other relationship will take place outside of being photographed.”

Another common reason:

‘‘I’ve been arrested too many times for exposing myself in public.”

I broke contact with anyone whom I thought was crazy. Few women contacted me. All who did dropped out or stood me up.

What would I have done, if asked to reveal myself? I was, and did. I photographed myself for Frank, my ‘man from London.’ It was at his request and done as a good-will gesture. The photographs I sent were based on his perceived desire rather than how I would have otherwise wanted to portray myself (confession), I will not say how or what I photographed (no confession).

There were numerous exhaustions and pleasures involved in the doing/making of the piece. A few stand out for me now as being most notable.

• The feeling that all of downtown Manhattan, a place where I’ve lived and circulated for many decades, was offering itself up to me in a new, unknown way, becoming an intimate, a lover, whereas previously it had just been a casual, if regular friend.

• The surprise and the rush when going from a virtual to actual relationship; the click when projection is complicated by actuality.

• The generosity on the part of both the photographed and the photographer, both of us making completely non-parallel offerings.

There is a magic in brushing up against someone you wouldn’t normally, akin to the magic of travel. With this piece I got to stay home.

You recently were kind enough to show me a rough cut of your latest video, in complete world, a work that is comprised of interviews with strangers on the street. The interviews are mostly about our contemporary political moment. These two works — What I’m Looking For and your latest — seem to be created out the same landscape and moment, but facing in different directions. Can you talk a little bit about you latest project and how, if at all, it relates to What I’m Looking For?

First, as a kind of talisman, I’d like to bring in a few words from my last answer: magic, brushing up against, home. I could also throw in the words desire, democracy, revelation, disclosure.

Why did I randomly go up to/accost several hundred complete strangers on the streets of New York in the hope of having them answer 25 or so personal, political and existential questions?

I started shooting in complete world in 2007, because I was angry and disillusioned with the US, and more importantly, NYC, where I was born and have put in a good deal of quality time. This city, ‘my’ city, was (is) increasingly white, rich and homogenized, and I was feeling alienated and pushed out economically and culturally. In the interest of full disclosure I’ll add that I was also frustrated with my own inactivity and powerlessness in the face of the disastrous direction this country has moved in for the last eight-plus years. Rather than leave New York and the US, or, perhaps, in preparation to do so, I decided to take my camera and find out who these people were that I was sharing a city with, by asking them the very same questions I was asking myself.

I can see how you’d think that What I’m Looking For points toward the ‘personal’ and in compete world toward the ‘public.’ I’d say that both projects, taking advantage of the random and not-so-random connections possible in public space, build bridges between these coexisting realms. What I’m Looking For achieves this through the exchange of images, in compete world through the exchange of words. Both works search out that intersection between I and we — that acknowledgement, sometimes begrudging, sometimes joyful or even disgusting, that all of us are a part of it. How do we say “we”?

My largest influences making in complete world were not the ubiquitous street interviews of television news, nor was I, despite my obvious interest in the Internet, channeling YouTube. My predecessors here were filmmakers such as Pasolini, Marker and Rouch, who, in the 60’s, thanks to changes in portable film-and-sound technology, were able to record street interviews for the first time. These innovators brought a freshness and sense of adventure to their forays outdoors, as well as a desire to delve deeply into the tumultuous post-war changes happening in their countries. I still find both excitement and usefulness in this model. Where I’d begin to distance myself is in terms of the position they create for themselves in relationship to their subjects.

What does it mean to be a viewer watching Pasolini’s Comizi d’Amore (1965), where interviewees are scrutinized, at times ridiculed, by Pasolini—and at intervals discussed with disdain by a panel of experts, including the writer Alberto Moravia and the psychoanalyst Cesare Musatti? I’d venture that, as a result, the typical viewer identifies more with the filmmaker than with his subjects. In Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch’s masterpiece, Chronicle of a Summer (1961), the filmmakers leave a more active central place for their subjects, even allowing their criticisms of the film to have (almost) the last word. But, in the end, the filmmakers—who read as father figures—are the guiding presences. I’ve made an ambivalent truce with father figures, and experts certainly have their place; I write this not to criticize these films or filmmakers, but to separate my film from theirs in two crucial interconnected ways, one having to do with structure, the other having to do with voice.

in complete world has no overarching commentary, direct authorial presence, narrative or argument. Its structure is cumulative. One answer builds on the next, one question builds to the next, giving the effect of a growing jigsaw, where issues are complicated. I, as editor, shape and counterpoint these myriad answers, and it is rhythm, pacing and the pleasure in the slow reveal of characters that eliminates the need for a more traditional structure such as plot or story. It is the viewer who comes to occupy the position of commentator, gradually making sense of the film while watching it. I think this form also encourages the viewer to enter vicariously into the position of interviewee, asking himself or herself what a personal answer would be for each question posed.

At the center of the film, in a direct, but also in a theoretical sense, is the issue of voice. Before starting, I was scared that street interviews would no longer function, because public space functions less and less in a socially collective way. I worried that my specific questions, which engage people as individuals and as citizens of a larger whole, would not reverberate, that they would be met with apathy, cynicism or indifference. Instead, what I found were articulate people, who were thinking precisely about these issues; and who wanted and needed to speak and be listened to.

And so my job as filmmaker was to build a platform from which this chorus of voices could be heard. I use this word ‘chorus’ specifically, because there is something so musical in the interaction of these voices. I’m also thinking of Greek chorus—an invention of democratic Athens—the collective unit whose dramatic task is to comment on the actions of the political protagonists. Looking back over the last decade, I feel that this voice—our voice, the individual and collective voice of people living in this city and country—has been lost, and must, at all costs, be regained. In light of the very recent election, I see that what I was capturing was the first wave of what I hope turns out to be a new era in the United States of a more realized participatory democracy.

I worked for years as an editor on documentaries, many of which would be considered political, and one of my frustrations was that these films would only reach a ‘self-selected’ audience that already believed in and was knowledgeable about the subject matter or cause. During a lively Q&A at a recent screening a university student asked me why I didn’t speak to any experts. I replied, “Who would the experts be, if not these people themselves?” We all struggle to balance our personal lives with our more public ones, we all feel the weight of individual and collective responsibility, and it is here that I think that this question of ‘preaching to the choir’ gets interesting/complicated. In this case, all Americans are part of ‘the choir,’ regardless of their political leanings. in complete world does not supply answers; I don’t think there are right and wrong answers to how to individually navigate a society. What it does point to is the pleasure in and necessity for all of us to acknowledge how truly interconnected we are; to recognize the necessity for individual and collective dialogue, response, and action, whether this manifests itself in public debate, demonstrations, organizing, the simple act of voting. I think of the final comment by the man who identifies himself as Felix: “I appreciate you coming to interview me and exchanging ideas and showing that democracy could exist between the people themselves.”

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine, the artist Judi Werthein, asked me to participate in a book project she is organizing. The project involves, in her words, writing “a story you’ve been told about another artist’s work – a work that you yourself have not seen – anywhere in a composition book I’ll be sending you.” All of the contributions are going to be collected into a book due to be published next year. Mine follows. It’s a great project, but after writing my entry I really wanted to know: who made this artwork? If you know, contact me in the comments below. Here’s my entry:

Someone once told me about a work involving a video camera, a pirate VHF-UHF broadcaster, and a biplane. Maybe some high-power magnesium lamps were involved as well. The artist and a pilot (Maybe the same person?) would fly the said plane over a suburban neighborhood with the camera aimed at the houses below. I included the lamps in my own version because how else could the setup work at night, although I guess the artist may have only done it during the day.

Anyway, this was in the days of analogue broadcast television, when most people received their TV signal through set-top antenna (aka “rabbit ears”). The plane flew really low, I imagine dangerously low, and buzzed the roofs of the houses. The plane not only was videoing the houses, but was also broadcasting the live feed from the pirate VHF-UHF device. TV viewers, nestled into their couches, would first hear the plane real low in the distance. As the plane approached, the sound of the engines magnified, and suddenly the TV show was replaced by a moving image of the viewer’s house from above. The plane roared over, the perplexed viewer rubbed his or her eyes in disbelief, and then the miniature televisual house was replaced by The Price is Right or Johnny Carson or Tom and Jerry or whatever people watched when set-top receivers were the going thing. I’m not sure who did this insane intervention or who told me about it. I’m skeptical whether it would even work. But I wouldn’t mind trying it myself someday.

- John Menick 11/14/08

The Disappearance will be screening as part of The Only Possible City — one of many programs in this year’s New York Underground Film Festival. The screening will be at Anthology Film Archives on April 4, 6:30 pm. Other artists and filmmakers include Shelly Silver, Matthew Buckingham, Gerard Byrne, and Harun Farocki.

Also of note, I have a review of Adam Pendleton’s brilliant Performa 07 performance, The Revival, in the March issue of Art in America. I didn’t get around to posting notice on the blog, so if you can’t find an March issue on newsstands anymore, the entire (huge) omnibus review of Performa 07 can be found here for free (sans pictures).

© Patrick Killoran. Lost & Found (Tierra del Mar), 2003.

We’ve heard about these places, micronations, tiny republics of one, whose borders are not quite legal and whose leaders are madder than the norm. Stories circulate about a country founded on a sea-surrounded gunner platform or a desert colony of hippies living in a network of crumbling domes, and we might even believe these stories, believe in the radical self-sufficiency they describe. Whether or not the stories are true doesn’t worry anyone. We know, unconsciously, that micronations don’t mess around much with the real, that they are content with being obstinate fantasies, just as we know that these micronations are not aimed inward at a short-lived mental utopia, but outward, towards us, towards us as an us, a missive about ourselves to ourselves sent from that electrified no man’s land between mass delusion and private pathology.

Micronations are not what initially drew me to Patrick Killoran’s public project, Lost & Found (Tierra del Mar), an artwork which, on the face of it, seems extremely remote from the shut-in world of first-person states. In fact, the initial interest came about because of the work’s jumble of civic-minded and self-denying gestures. Lost & Found (Tierra del Mar) takes the form of a lost wallet, or wallets, which have been purposefully scattered, or “lost,” throughout various international cities. A few might be found and returned, but more likely they would be riffled-through and tossed, or maybe tossed and that’s it. But if you did find one, then you would experience the work, and if not, past tense summaries are about as close as you’ll get.

Before you get the wrong idea: Killoran’s work wasn’t a test of public morality in that painful and highly questionable candid camera sort of way. The wallet was a delivery device, and returning it was a bit of problem, mostly because the home of the wallet’s owner wasn’t exactly a real place, and even more confusingly, the owner didn’t exist either. The man is Thomas Swallow, who is supposedly his fifties, and who, upon closer examination of the ID in the wallet, bears an uncanny resemblance to Walt Elias Disney. Alongside receipts from local restaurants and business cards, a discoverer of the wallet finds something else: money from the “Reserve Bank of Tierra del Mar,” an obviously fictional country, and here we return to micronations.

But my interview with Patrick began with my initial interest, in the work’s complex and paradoxical relation to publicity and privacy:

John Menick: Although Lost & Found is a work that exists outside of the gallery space, and can be considered a work of public art, its main themes seem to be discretion and secrecy. Our wallets are among our most private possessions, even more precious than a purse or backpack, and here that privacy is put at risk. Can you describe what led you to make a work that is so much about the exposure of privacy?

Patrick Killoran: I was included in the 1998 Biennale of Sydney, and part of my duties for the show included being on a panel at the Gallery of New South Wales. It was one of those classic art world moments where there were way too many speakers and the event had gone on for hours; but there I was sitting on stage having to look enthralled. The audience looked exhausted — like a zombie convention. When my turn to speak finally came, I could not imagine going through an explanation of all of my work. So I took my wallet out of my pocket and threw it into the audience.

The gist of what I said after throwing the wallet had to do with breaking the power relationship between audience and speaker by throwing something so personal. I recall feeling very uncomfortable watching the audience look through my wallet. It was all very dramatic and silly and I cringe because I must have seemed like such a brat. However that initial gesture left a deep impression on me. It planted the seed of what would become Lost & Found (Tierra del Mar).

Jonathan Watkins was the curator of that Biennale. Five years later, I found myself proposing Lost & Found (Tierra del Mar) to him for Ikon Gallery’s offsite program. Over that five-year period, I had mainly employed a strategy of modifying objects that people recognize from everyday life. All of those works dealt with private space and how we filter out other people. Like the interior of a car or a letter, the wallet’s interior is really reserved for one person. Allowing someone to go through your wallet is quite intimate. The wallet was a form I wanted to work with but it took a long time for me to decide how to do it. However, Lost & Found (Tierra del Mar) also represented a shift in strategy. It introduced a type of narrative and imagery that did not exist in my work previously.

In Sydney you acted alone, the relation between you and your audience was very one-to-one. However, in Birmingham you are involving an institution in your gesture. How did Ikon initially react to this shared responsibility? What was the process like while developing the project?

Performance art has a tendency of using the artist’s body as the “source” of the work. This concept of the artist as source is something I wanted to avoid. In most of my works, I have deferred that experience directly to the audiences’ bodies. In the project Lost & Found my tactic was to generate a fictional character as a way of removing myself as a source. Although I am the one “losing” the wallets, what the finder contends with is the fictional character I have created.

In terms of completing the project, the fundamental decisions were made at the meeting with Jonathan. I had completed a rough version of the wallet. It was really the craziest idea I proposed that day and I was shocked when he chose it.

The discussion that followed orbited the fact that I wanted to make it impossible for the wallets to be returned. Almost everyone suggests placing a note inside “if lost please return” with the address of the institution. For me, this was too much like an advertising technique. It had been done before as guerilla marketing. Plus, having the wallets returned would create a sort of relic, which I also wanted to avoid. All these strategies were “conceptually tight”. This was the sort of tactic I was taught in school. It had to go beyond that, to a new place. After many games of pool, Jonathan agreed that this was the core of the work. We had to lose an object that had nowhere to go.

Once I lost the wallets, the police freaked out, the heads of precincts began to show up at Ikon. They were infuriated. In the UK most lost wallets end up at the police station. I guess if dozens of identical wallets begin to turn up it is a bit unnerving. Debbie Kermode who ran the off-site projects bore the brunt of the police hysteria, while I watched from the rafters, again feeling like a brat. As time went on, the police wanted to disassociate themselves from the piece and I suspect it was because they realized that it did not warrant such a reaction. When the other incarnations of Lost & Found would appear in New York, Vilnius, and Chicago, the police did not even blink and eye.

But in your question I sense something deeper about the involvement of the institution. Ikon provided more than logistics, press and funding. For many, institutions provide the framing of what is and is not art. I wanted to see what would happen if I used the institution to make an event that was meaningful but was not framed as art. The wallet was not displayed in the gallery. The institutions I have worked with seem to look at the project as one big experiment.

It’s funny to think you had inadvertently designed a piece whose ideal audience was the Birmingham police department. Although, in a sense, the work turns everyone into a kind of amateur detective, especially when one considers the actual contents of the wallet. But before speaking about the contents, I wanted to ask you to describe the responses to the work in the different cities.

I am not sure we can gauge the reaction. It was not observable, because of the work’s scale and how it was disseminated. It was my intention to make a piece that would produce hundreds of outcomes. Yes, the police reacted and threatened to arrest me, but that is only one reaction. At best, I can only say that I have watched people find the wallets and I have watched people ignore them. But this all seems opaque. The police in Birmingham said that people were removing the fictional money and trying to change it into British pounds. In New York and Chicago, it was virtually a non-event and the only accounts were coincidental. For example, in Chicago someone attending the opening at Hyde Park Art Center said that she had witnessed group of people trying to get a wallet that was behind a fence. They were using a stick to try and slide it close enough to them to grab. I remembered throwing one wallet between the bars of a fence. I should point out that Chicago’s wallet, Lost & Found (Shangri-La) drew from a different narrative based primarily on the imaginary country of Shangri-la.

In some instances, other people help me lose wallets. For example, when I could not attend the group exhibition 24/7 in Vilnius I had accomplices lose the wallets. As you can see, these accounts are all just fragmentary, so I am not sure I can make definitive conclusions about the audiences’ response.

However, I must confess that the wallets are designed with a narrative in mind, or at least a sequence. I have always assumed that at first people believe the wallet is real and for a short time they react accordingly, but then when they study the contents they realize that that the wallet is fake. Your comment about amateur detective is interesting because the finder first tries to solve the problem of how to return the wallet. Like any good mystery it brings them into a story that is far more complicated. Who would go to all this trouble? What is this wallet?

Continued

© Patrick Killoran. Lost & Found (Tierra del Mar), detail, 2003.

And who is this guy from Tierra del Mar? And why does he resemble Walt Disney? Not only does it become apparent that there’s a fiction being told, but also that everything in the wallet circles back to some form of utopianism. I know it’s hard to gauge, but what kind of reaction do you think this utopian narrative would instigate from a member of the public?

This fellow’s name is Thomas Swallow, named after a British utopian author. His photo on the ID is Walt Disney. The money and any official documents found inside the wallet are fabricated. These articles are mixed in with real items from the cities where the wallets are lost.

Thomas has a religious charm and fortunes displayed in the front window of the wallet, but in the back pocket you will find a card to a strip club and a condom. Thomas is a man of contradictions. He is a citizen of Tierra del Mar, which is a reference to a “country” that Ernest Hemingway’s brother attempted to create on a large raft in the Caribbean. Needless to say, this micro-nation failed. I imagine that when someone scrutinizes the wallet’s contents, they find an entire world, something that has detail and unfolds endlessly.

As I said earlier, I did not want the wallet to be “the artist’s wallet.” In addition, I wanted to make it impossible to be returned. So when I asked myself, where is a place that we cannot go? Utopia was the answer. What I am instigating is an event where the finder goes from doing a practical task of returning (or stealing) a wallet, to suddenly discovering an imaginary world. The inside of the wallet is imaginary, while the outside was material and tangible. The intimate space houses our aspirations and desires. I like very much, that the discovery of this imaginary world is the same moment the wallet becomes immobile.

However, I should say that this is only one way Lost & Found is experienced. There are some people who never look inside or who happen to see multiple lost wallets as they walk through the train station or park. All of these experiences are valid. Still, I do not think I have answered your question: what am I instigating? I should go back to the idea of the amateur detective. The wallets are clues or evidence. At first, the case appears easily solved but after further investigation the case changes. It shifts from a practical problem to a metaphorical one. Whose wallet is it? Now the wallet is theirs.

One of the most complex qualities of the project is how it embodies the contradictions of utopia: namely, how it stresses that utopia always has a boundary over which someone can never cross. Utopias are always exclusionary. For example, I think Disney represents a utopian vision – I’m willing to give it that – but it’s not a utopia many have a place in. Utopias are, in a sense, like Hemingway’s micronation. Micronations are often designed for a select group – add outsiders, and it would collapse. To come back to my initial question, I’m wondering if this uneasy mixture of extreme privacy and utopia is an attempt to assess critically contemporary utopianism?

There is a tension between the lofty ideals of the world represented inside the wallet and the ethical decisions facing the wallet’s finder. I am trying to differentiate between actualizing utopia and acting on your ideals. The choice to return a wallet is not utopian because utopia exists within the imagination. Returning a wallet is not a fantasy, but it is an ideal one can actually negotiate. Utopias are utopias precisely because they are unattainable. Like the fortune cookie slip in the wallet says, “Utopia is always far away.”

As some of you who follow these things might know, the conceptual artist Michael Asher has been doing an ongoing project for the public art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Münster, in which he parks a trailer at various sites in the city. Asher started the project in 1977 for the first Projekte Münster, and he has repeated it for every iteration of the shown since. It’s been 30 years now, so the city has changed, but not the trailer. Here it is today, looking a little out of era:

Anyway, I don’t know what the carjacking rates are for Münster, but according to a blurb in ArtForum, the said trailer was stolen. Or, as ArtForum writes, the trailer “disappeared without a trace.” A short while later:

Police reported that the trailer had turned up in the town of Telgte, Germany, approximately six miles from Münster. An initial inspection found no damage to the work, which is an original. The trailer will undergo another inspection before being reinstalled in the exhibition.

A statistical fluke? Münster’s yearly carjacking strikes a conceptual artwork? Or something more ingenious, a meta-conceptual art heist pulled off by some disaffected German art students? Stay tuned…