And The Wonders You Can Do
“As a queer artist I seek to create a temporal historical rupture,” says Texas-based performance artist Sarah Hill, while describing her – sorry, their – 2014 opus They Wonder. “During the performance,” we’re told, “I repeatedly spin around and around in circles.” The reason being that, as an artist and worker of profundity, Ms Hill is “interested in the continuous action of spinning and getting no-where, falling down and getting back up.”
Inevitably, Ms Hill tells us that she – sorry, they – disdains “the pressures of commodification,” and rejects “the populist template of art as a form of leisure or entertainment.” Yes, I know, a fearless and terribly radical decision, the effects of which may become apparent in the following video, recorded at the Waterloo Centre for the Arts, Iowa.
See, now you realise you were all starved of art and its enrichments. And indeed still are.
So, when I was a small child seven, and I spun around until I fell down, I was an artist?
Inevitably, Ms Hill tells us that she – sorry, they – disdains “the pressures of commodification,” and rejects “the populist template of art as a form of leisure or entertainment.”
I didn’t feel relaxed or entertained. Does that mean it worked?
I didn’t feel relaxed or entertained. Does that mean it worked?
It’s hard to guess how you’d judge that. It has no discernible aesthetic properties, and Ms Hill disdains such things. Which I suppose makes life much easier if you’re not overly gifted with talent.
The older, less fit, Wonderwoman took the ravages of time badly. The world had looked so full of possibilities when she was young. She started hitting the bottle, hard.
I think ‘they’ is doing it wrong.
Reminds me of an incident back in the Nineties when The Other Half and I lived in an unglamorous part of Nottingham. We returned home late one evening to hear the Wonder Woman theme music blasting out from the downstairs flat. I knocked on the door to ask the occupant to turn it down, preferably by fifteen notches, however the music was so loud it took several attempts to attract attention. When the door finally opened, a fog of marijuana spilled into the hallway, followed, sheepishly, by a camp little chap, high as a kite and very apologetic, and wearing a sheet in what I assume was an improvised toga-cum-party frock.
I’m not sure which of us was more unprepared.
You’ll be thrilled to hear there’s also an outdoors version.
If by “a temporal historical rupture” he means an unprecedented disconnect from talent and artistry, then Bravo!
Seriously, what the hell does that mean? Besides “I’m making shit up as I go.”
How does one unwatch a video?
I fear the psychic scarring that is going to result if I can’t.
How does one unwatch a video?
No refunds. Credit note only.
I met the real Wonder Woman once, back in the fifties, when we at the Area trying to get that bastard alien shuttle back up in the air. Size of a linebacker, face like a bulldog sucking a lemon, and didn’t smell too sweet either. Rumoured to hit the bottle when her girlfriend kicked off. The transparent aluminium jet was cool, though. So that’s actually quite like her, really.
Was there a broomstick that he, sorry they, had to jump over after spinning like Jay Carney?
You’ll be thrilled to hear there’s also an outdoors version.
Also one under canvas.
I think you’ll find it’s a towering work.
Breath-taking and luminous.
Hmmm.
Insists on being known for spinning in circles, but somehow has not achieved the cultural or creative acclamation of and given to Stevie Nicks or the Whirling Dervishes.
Oops.
…disdains “the pressures of commodification,”…
So she appeared in Iowa on her own dime then?
…and rejects “the populist template of art as a form of leisure or entertainment.”
She appears to be successful there. Watching a few minutes of the vid was certainly laborious.
Oops.
Yes, even on its own terms it seems a bit… half-arsed. Which brings us to the audience. I mean, what are they thinking?
They can’t all be friends and relatives who felt obliged to turn up.
Just think: fifty years ago, if you wanted to watch a pissed-up tranny stumble about in a Wonder Woman costume, you had to move to London. Now, it’s available to everybody. Ain’t technology grand?
… an unglamorous part of Nottingham.
Can there really be such a thing? Say it isn’t so.
Can there really be such a thing?
The Park Estate, a gated conservation area, is (or was) quite swanky. Alas, we didn’t live there.
What the hell have I gotten myself into…
Breath-taking and luminous.
The hairy legs are what truly elevate this bold and powerful masterwork.
They can’t all be friends and relatives who felt obliged to turn up.
The question is who among them is taking it seriously, and who is there for the freak show. Regarding the latter, at least in the olden days the performers weren’t pretending, even those just scamming, to be anything other than something for people to gawk at.
Whelp, she got one thing right. We do wonder. About all sorts of things. Just not the themes she’s expecting, if indeed she expects any.
Try Doc in a Box:
I’ve always found humor and puppets a great way to reveal traumatic experiences.
Try Doc in a Box:
In the same vein (pardon the pun) there is Surgery.
Yes, QED.
From the island of Them-is-scary.
From the island of Them-is-scary.
I see what you did there.
Three year old girls love to find ways to make their shoes clack repeatedly. It’s cute, but if we can wrap it in some pseudo-intellectual verbiage, we can turn it into something much more serious.
And, the internet is absolutely filled with enthusiastic 3 year olds starring in their own, divine, shoe clacking videos. Is this a genre now?
I think the 3 year olds are better, way more dramatic with genuine enthusiasm and much more intellectual deliberation of the role they are playing.
We are all having our own mental breakdowns now, so watching someone else’s is boring.
P. T. Barnum is laughing in Heaven.
The first thing came to mind when I saw that was the Seinfeld episode “She has MAN hands!!”.
And the only thing I wondered was if this human dolled up and stumbling around in a Wonder Woman costume was a female human jacked up on male hormones or a male human.
And then I got torqued off for even caring to wonder. I don’t give a rat’s arse what people want to get up to on their own time. But I do get angry that it’s getting more and more forced on me to care, and to join in, what with the flap about pronouns and such.
I shall submit myself to the Correction Booth forthwith for this heinous transgression into WrongThought.
What xe really wants.
Farnsworth,
Yes, the hairy legs did detract from the overall wonderment, as did the hanging butt cheeks fighting to the escape their confines.
I am less astonished by these ludicrous displays, than by the fact they garner attendees. I have more disdain for the audience, than the lunatic.
But I do get angry that it’s getting more and more forced on me to care, and to join in, what with the flap about pronouns and such.
The paying for it. Forgot about that part. Torque on my good man…
I really didn’t have Iowa down as that kind of place. Brooklyn, obviously. But not Iowa. I hope she got home in one piece…
I was going to say I hope all its spinning causes irreversible brain damage but upon further reflection, it seems that has already occurred. Now, if only the sweet release of death were to overtake it during one of its ridiculous “performances.”
There are only three types of pronouns in the English language: masculine (he, him, his), feminine (she, her, hers) and neutral (it, its). If it doesn’t want to be called “she/her”, it will be called “it” as it, despite the wookie-dense hair on its legs and armpits, is certainly not a “he/him” and “they/theirs” is plural and incorrect grammar when applied to a singular object. I refuse to recognize all those other made up “pronouns” as legitimate English.
I really didn’t have Iowa down as that kind of place. Brooklyn, obviously. But not Iowa. I hope she got home in one piece…
Not only in one piece, probably with a parade, alas, Des Moines is being taken over by hipster douchebags.
@Oeberon: I’m quite willing to accept a they/their for a neutral pronoun similar to a plural for an *unknown* entity as a *formal neutral* (hence, a person of unknown sex, which “it”/”its” does not indicate), because that has been prolific (if not completely accepted) for time out of mind. Similar form for plural and a singular isn’t really that odd.
Comes from the very origins of English – compare/contrast with modern German “Sie”/”ihre”. Those wacky Germans use a word for formal “you” (neutral, capitalized for singular), feminine pronoun, and plural in both cases. In English similar roots went different directions* to “thou”, “she”, and “they”… but “they” seems to have lingered in confusion (?) as an alternate for “she” in a more gender neutral form. However, “they” should be understood as normalized *out* of regular English for a known entity. Why? Because it’s simply good manners to recognize a known entity’s sex.
In a quirk of English habit, since objects are not gendered, use of “it”/”its” then automatically implies a mere object or seems to – not a being. Therefore, the formal neutral/archaic which resembles an archaic “she” isn’t really that jarring.
Of course, maintaining “they” as a known entity is thoroughly obnoxious. Not a hypothetical case or an unnamed individual, any attempt to resist declaring sex is pretentious and stupid.
As a side note, English confusion of “her” as both a possessive and an accusative form when “his” and “him” are different is just as irregular.
I wonder if people in the audience were making bets on how many times Ms.Hill takes a nose dive during the course of her performance.
I’d watch this if I was bored and waiting for a bus and then I’d be bored again and look down the street, hoping to see the bus. Or I’d move to another stop.
Why do all of these attention beggars move about as though they are completely unused to inhabiting their own fleshbags? Is it because they’re supposedly on a higher plane of artistically thinking than those of us who actually can walk and chew gum at the same time?
There are only three types of pronouns in the English language: masculine (he, him, his), feminine (she, her, hers) and neutral (it, its).
Neutral:
I—me, the one stating something.
You—whether singular or plural, the one(s) being addressed.
One—not quite me, what I would do were I anyone else. One does, one goes, one is.
—There is the recurring declaration that the use of One requires that one’s ancestors have been William the Conqueror’s camp followers and so forth, and therefore that one refer to oneself as One all the time, but no. For merely the handiest counterexample, there is a particular formal statement regarding the Manchester concert bombing: “I know I speak for everyone in expressing my deepest sympathy to all who have been affected by this dreadful event and especially to the families and friends of those who have died or were injured.
I’m not pressing play on the video. Nothing can make me press play on the video
a temporal historical rupture
It wants to break time?
I used to wonder what sort of world it would be if everyone were to acclaim Nurse Ratched dictator-for-life. I wonder no longer.
Singular “they” is hundreds of years old.
I’ll follow the King James Version and Shakespeare quite happily. Not so much someone who thinks they know better.
I wonder why someone who insists on the pronoun they, which implies an ungendered state, still chooses a female name, Sarah. I mean, if you choose a name that explicitly signals ‘female’ (and spend a lot of time dressed in public as a woman), to then insist on ungendered pronouns seems a little… contrary. Mixed signals and all that.
Another, equally towering work:
Book those tickets now, people.
…I’m gonna need one of those credit notes, David.
I’m gonna need one of those credit notes, David.
Of course. There’s just the small matter of the paperwork.
You may want to pull up a chair.
“Book those tickets now, people.”
Those people watching, please tell me they didn’t pay to watch that…
Off topic possibly, who knows, the world of strange just keeps growing?
“Met Police officer becomes Britain’s first ‘bi-gender’ PC”
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/met-police-officer-becomes-britains-first-bigender-pc-a3546881.html
Met Police officer becomes Britain’s first ‘bi-gender’ PC
I’m not sure how one might go about interacting with someone, not least a supposed authority figure, whose identity is apparently so unstable that on any given day they could turn up for work (or to court) as a man or a woman. At some point, “diversity” becomes a Two Ronnies comedy sketch.
Met Police officer becomes Britain’s first ‘bi-gender’ PC
I think that one deserves a post of its own. Point any comments over there.
Free admission, I note. Presumably because capitalism is evil, not because…no, right; capitalism it is.
Oh look! They is fat, talentless, and needing of attention. How very precious and rare.
I, for one, am gratified to note that even at 73 years of age, I am sufficiently astute (artistically) to be able to glean all of the import from they’s performance in only 37 seconds.
I’ve gotta say… the new Wonder Woman movie is a disappointment.
After watching 1 minute of this I am now having to rethink my attitude to the performance art scene in The Big Lebowski. Far from being a parody it is now several times superior to that which the directors were seeking to mock.
I’m from Texas. I’ve never seen a human case of Mad Cow Disease before.