[-empyre-] Invocation of the Queer Spirits

Christiane Robbins cpr at mindspring.com
Sat Jul 25 04:54:41 EST 2009


In an jump here, by chance, has anyone seen this recent piece by  
Bronson and Hobbs ... and, if so, might you have any comments as to  
how it may or may not add to our "dinner conversation" re: relational  
aesthetics?




AA Bronson & Peter Hobbs
AA Bronson and Peter Hobbs' Invocation of the Queer Spirits (Governors  
Island), a séance held here on June 25, 2009, invoked historical,  
queer, and marginalized practices as a way to heal the past and  
acknowledge the present. As Bronson described, the ritual includes  
"drawing a circle, asking for protection, and invoking the spirits,  
naming the various histories and communities of the dead." This  
intervention underscores how queer communities have overlapped with  
the histories of Spiritualists and shamans, as well as all-male  
communities such as the military population that called Governors  
Island home. Inspired by the countless lives and deaths that took  
place on the island, the project invites us to think again about what  
is valued and what is excised from our collective history. The  
physical remains of the ritual are presented here.





On Jul 23, 2009, at 11:00 PM, Robert Summers wrote:

> Virginia Wrote: "In the interest of agonism, precisely not antagonism,
> could you clarify your strategy of recuperative readings? I agree
> wholeheartedly that just because something evidences problems along
> one axis, that does not in any way mean that it thereby loses any kind
> of efficacy. however, I do think that it is important to be mindful of
> the problem that one strategy presents, so that we might retain what
> is useful and adapt whatever is problematic, on the basis of its blind
> spots.
>
> I think Vaginal Davis' work, as presented by Jose Munoz, in fact,
> provides us with a great example of this, and so I wonder if you see
> her work in particular, qua her work, not qua Fanon, as making and
> employing tactics that offer recuperative readings?"
>
> Virginia,
>
> I think she does both reparative readings and recuperative readings.
> On the level of reparative reading is the surfacing of love for and
> hope in an object (be it an image or a text).  Let me turn to
> Sedgwick's reparative reading, which is a counter to paranoid reading,
>
> "The sculpture in this picture [of Judith Scott who is a textile
> artist] is fairly characteristic of Scott’s work in its construction:
> a core assembled from large, heterogeneous materials has been hidden
> under many wrapped or darned layers of multicolored yarn, cord,
> ribbon, rope, and other fiber, producing a durable three-dimensional
> shape, usually oriented along a single axis of length, whose curves
> and planes are biomorphically resonant and whose scale bears
> comparison to Scott’s own body.  The formal achievements that are
> consistent in her art include her inventive techniques for securing
> the giant bundles, her subtle building and modulation of complex
> three-dimensional lines and curves and her startlingly original use of
> color, whether bright or muted, which can stretch across a plan,
> simmer deeply through the multilayered wrapping, or drizzle
> graphically along an emphatic suture. All of Scott’s work that I have
> seen on its own has an intense presence, but the subject of this
> photograph also includes her relation to her completed work, and
> presumptively also the viewer’s relation to the sight of that dyad.
> (Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 22)"
>
> Indeed, there is a loving and reparative tying, holding, together.
> The way that Scott holds her finished work, and the way that this work
> holds Scott, can be understood as the way Sedgwick holds her own work,
> and the way I hold all three.  More broadly, this holding together can
> be understood as the ways in which "queers" hold those objects and
> subjects that can (for whatever reason) bring pleasure and even pain.
> There is a queer-intertwining that connects, interconnects, and binds
> together (for however long and to what ever ends) seemingly disparate
> bodies (in the broadest sense of the word).  And, I think that Vaginal
> Davis does such work when she creates her nightclubs or performances
> -- we know there is violence, we know the outside hates "queers," we
> know that people are dying, but how to make a space, if only
> momentarily that, that doesn't surface what we already know, but
> rather there is a space that is  created that explores other modes of
> not-knowing, other spaces that have yet to be explored, which can be
> incredibly transformative,and none of this is to argue to a willing
> forgetfulness or a ignoring of that pain that covers the earth, but it
> is to give primacy to love and hope.  Another mode of enacting a
> reparative practice can be seen in this video, and one may argue that
> it is also a modality of what Munoz calls "disidentification" (I
> wonder if there is a connection between reparative readings and/as
> practices and disidentification):
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEdaUvW81Zw
>
> In "Chicken Man" Vaginal Davis re-routs and recycles racist images,
> enactments, and stereotypes in a way that deflates them (one can
> employ a Munoz reading of disidentification.  I would argue that Davis
> can only do this through the superhuman love of queer, which is to say
> that images, etc. can be manipulated in ways not intended to be
> manipulated and deployed by the minoritarian subject/s.  Similarly,
> isn't this also a type of recuperation via an enactment of the
> shameless -- and shame and shameless are only a suffix a part -- and
> there is always the risk (precarious life and visualities, indeed) of
> having the image/s, enactment/s, etc. be re-recuperated, if you will,
> by the majoritarian sphere, the State apparatus.  In this way, I think
> "everything" "progressive," "un-becoming," and "radicle" -- so from
> reparative, to recuperative, to deconstructive, to queering -- needs
> to be constantly and chronically re-done and re-deployed: the critical
> and creative work is _never_ done, but only ever just beginning.
> Without a doubt we must remain, as Butler has argued, "critically
> queer."
>
> I guess what I am trying to say is that all (?) of Vaginal Davis's
> (art)work is both reparative and recuperative.  I think even her name
> gestures toward this: sexualizing Angela Davis for other ends and
> purposes, which is a beginning and revitalizing.  I guess this is why
> I am hesitant to cast aside (almost) anything from Genet, to leather
> boots, to queer, to relational aesthetics -- because these can always
> be read otherwise and in multiple directions and I think that the work
> of Vaginal Davis demonstrates this, at least for me: interestingly,
> she is a fan of Genet.
>
> Does this lead to an answer?  Have I lost myself and the answer -- as
> well as the question?
>
> As ever,
> Robert
>
> Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
> Lecturer
> Art History and Visual Culture
> Otis College of Art and Design
> e: rsummers at otis.edu
> w: http://ospace.otis.edu/robtsum/Welcome
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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