[-empyre-] Pumping

[Joel Tauber]

Thank you for your thoughts and kind words, Christina.  I appreciate it.



I am invested in reframing contemporary environmental issues and the
problems of corporate monstrosities.  “Pumping” tries to do this through a
historical lens – as well as through an imagined future.



I have employed plenty of humor in my work to couch my political critiques,
but I have shied away from irony.



I wonder if sincerity and irony are possible to co-exist in a work of art
today…  amidst a culture of nihilism and Jeff Koons sculptures where
everything is trivialized and turned into pop….   But, surely certain things
are far from trivial and certain things demand our attention…



I take the construction of cultural objects (like “art”) seriously.  I know
that there is a school of thought that believes that art is outside of
politics and ethics – but I firmly believe that nothing can be responsibly
made or considered outside of those domains.  Everything functions on a
political level.



The slogan “art can change the world” may have become a cliché, but I don’t
think the principle has been debunked.





http://www.joeltauber.com/pumping.html



On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 12:54 PM, christina
<christina at christinamcphee.net>wrote:

> Joel,
>
> In your installation "Pumping"-- you have filmed yourself as a pumpman/
> lineman.  Your character is dressed in a thirties or forties period work
> outfit.  Even the glasses (little round horn rimmed) are right.
> The art direction recalls Hollywood films of the same period. I am thinking
> especially of the Steinbeck adaptations to film .  Grapes of Wrath.  Of Mice
> and Men.   When I watched it at first I was completely
> involved in this atmosphere, so much so that I really thought it was old
> period footage or outtakes.
>
> When i realized that it was you, performing as pump man,  I felt pleasure
> at having been awakened out of  reverie. I had to think right away about why
> you were performing like that, in apparently actual locations,
> like dry desert sites near LA.
>
> The shots struck me as true- not landscapes 'like' or evocative of the
> region (as with "No Country for Old Men" , the Coen brothers exam on early
> oil in California).   You went to a lot of trouble to get these shots.
> Your landscape of rail, desert hills, and parched dirt has extraordinary
> craft.  And you make us watch this place roll by over and over.  The pump
> man never gets done.
>
> What grabs me by the scruff of the neck and shakes me is, how you have used
> the current vogue for
> 'reperformance' to do MORE than recapitulate ironically, as it were,  a
> forties aesthetic.  Unlike, perhaps, Longo,  with the 'MadMen' style
>  falling suits of the sixties.
> Remediation, but with a difference.  What is this?
>
> Please tell more about this strategy of reperformance and the tactic of
> extreme verisimilitude, combined with repetition.
>
> -cm
>
>
>
> On Mar 11, 2011, at 9:55 PM, Joel Tauber wrote:
>
>  1873.  Los Angeles.  6,000 people living in a semi-desert.
>>
>>
>> Dreams of trains.  Rumbling through the landscape.
>>
>> Ushering in “Civilization”, Christianity, and Economic Progress.
>>
>>
>> A massive government handout.  The Southern Pacific Railroad seizes it,
>> and commandeers the City.   Bribes.  Propaganda.  Squashing of rivals.
>>  Escalation of freight prices.
>>
>>
>> Pullman Strike.  Army quells strike.
>>
>>
>> Trains. Tracks.  Infrastructure.
>>
>> Proclamations of paradise.
>>
>> Migration.  Rapid growth.  Sprawl.
>>
>>
>> An exciting city emerges.  A powerful railroad facilitates and shapes its
>> growth.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.joeltauber.com/pumping.html
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Joel Tauber
>> joeltauber at gmail.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
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>



-- 
Joel Tauber
http://www.joeltauber.com/
joeltauber at gmail.com
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