Dance of Destruction

Yesterday was really an exercise in academic intelligence for me. My class with Amelia Jones, "Identity and Visual Representation" has be a painful pleasure thus far, with the first few classes focusing on dense philosophical theories of self, Other and art. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, a beast of existential brilliance. Other texts considered were Lacan, Butler and Hegel... all within a two hour period. Indeed, mental aerobics.

In the evening, I attended the Dominic Johnson's lecture "Glorious Catastrophe: The Rise and Fall of Jack Smith". Johnson is a professor of English and Drama at Queen Mary in London and also a performance artist himself. His work involves an exploration of wound and body through controversial and extreme techniques:

When discussing his work, he was quick to dispel any connection to (or belittling of) the psychological issue of self-harm. He equated, quite humorously, the associations to those of acting and pathological lying. 

The bulk of his talk, however, centered around his presentation of a paper on Jack Smith, a little known American filmmaker and performance artist. Smith himself seems like quite the darkly humorous and tragic character, whose work focused on themes of the exotic and the apocalypse. Johnson's well-constructed discussion of Smith's work drew heavily from Lee Edelmen's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive and Edward Said's oft-referenced writings on Orientalism. Johnson argued that the theme of Atlantis is central to Smith's work as a pseudo-historical example of what a utopian idea may become. Additionally, Smith's camp aesthetic and burlesque, darkly comedic and paranoid redressings exploit Said's concepts of the theatrical, creating an exploration of space estranged and an uncanny utopia. Of course, it was all said much more elegantly and succinctly than I could possibly do justice here. Anyways, I'm looking forward to the book to explore Johnson's ideas more fully.

Jack Smith

The post-lecture discussion was all the more interesting, as Amelia discussed the work in terms of our class discussion earlier that morning by bringing up the problem of the binary. Johnson explained Smith's work "bears witness to one's own confusion"... in a sense, not to destroy the binary but to scramble it, embracing ambivalence and contradiction. An interesting debate ensued on the ostensible recuperation of Smith and the requirements of exclusion for the maintenance of the artistic 'canon'. 

Jack Smith

It seems that the theme of the Other has been recurring for me over the past few weeks within my academic life. Certainly, the basic mode of human existence is the definition of oneself through one's relation to the Other, and the subsequent exclusion of the Other. The notion of the binary, emerging in the philosophies of Kant in the 18th century, has plagued philosophers (and us academics) ever since. Still, artists such as Jack Smith, and Dominic Johnson himself, offer a "confusion" through their work, which certainly exists on the edge of the canon.

Jack Smith

Dominic Johnson

And a little side note: Post-post lecture we all went for drink at KroBar, where I had a lovely discussion with Monica Pearl, a professor in the American and English Studies department. She plugged the Sexuality Summer School put on by the University of Manchester, which I will subsequently plug here. According to the website,

'The Summer School addresses current debates within queer studies, emphasising in particular its implication for the interdisciplinary study of culture. It offers an opportunity for students to discuss queer debates with researchers in the CSSC as well as international scholars brought in for the event.'

With lectures by Juliana Snapper, Amelia Jones, Joanne Meyerowitz and others, it ought to be a worthwhile event. However, spaces are limited to only 40 people, so register soon if you are interested. (Cough cough, Anchal. You know you want to attend with me!)