Sept 10, 2009
The Book About Death was a project put together by Mathew Rose. There was an open call for anyone to submit postcards about death. The only requirements were that the edition was 500 and it said "A Book About Death" on it. One of each card was displayed on the wall and the boxes the cards arrived in sat on the floor for anyone to take. The idea being that any visitor could make their own, unbound book about death. The opening had various fluxus flavored performances.
A historical note: A Book About Death was in homage to Ray Johnson.
A Book about Death / by Ray Johnson (Ray Johnson : s.l. 1960s). A set of offset mailings compiled in no prescribed order. Cf.
Ray Johnson : Correspondences (Paris etc. 1999) and
Correspondence, an exhibition of the letters of Ray Johnson (Raleigh 1976). Each copy has various foliations. Each copy has some sheets not found in the others. See Clive Philpott, '
Ray Johnson's Book about Death 1963-1965', published in
Blastitude 13 (August 2002).
We showed up to a giant line going down the street past all the trendy clothing stores. Seeing a Gap store with (badly) dancing models and ice water handed out off of trays by servers was pretty shocking to me. I guess people no longer have to decide if they want to go to a club, go to a restaurant or go shopping. They can have it all.
We made it in after a 20 minute wait and the place was packed. The cards were being picked up by the visitors in a manner that reminded me of the unbridled desire orchestrated by the shops below. We arrived late, so soon after we got in the gallery space we pushed all the postcards to the walls and prepared for the performances.
The first was Requiem for Rubber Bands by Cecil Touchon. A woman sang while we strummed stretched rubber bands handed out to the audience.
The second was a cacophony of people reading different scripts. It was hard to make out anything they said, though mostly because the audience was talking so loud they drowned out almost everything the presenters tried to say.
The third, and in my opinion the only good performance, was by a German called Brandstifter who had recorded people's names upon their entering the gallery with an old tape deck. For the performance he said some words in German than played the tape deck into the microphone. The tape started with him saying, "All the mentioned persons have to die", which was then followed by the voices of the audience saying their own names. After about ten minutes he then took the tape out, pulled the tape out of the cassette and pulled it around the audience--effectively killing the work. Silly yet profound, the essence of good Fluxus.
The fourth performer, Mark Bloch, seemed to be doing an infomercial in art drag about his old book and his plans for a new book on Ray Johnson. Showing that covering yourself in artsy collage images doesn't make you an performance artist.
The fifth presenter read about another performance, but I couldn't hear any of it due to the poor sound system.
The sixth was a flash based animation.
The seventh was also a movie, but surprisingly to me by Carolee Schneeman. It turned out to look like a pretty banal video of a cat (dying). Yet it did hold my attention and it was one of the few times the audience actually got quiet, which seems telling (of something).
The eighth was a teacher at the university of Pennsylvania who curates, takes picture of Road Kill, etc... her introduction to herself was longer than her "performance" which was marred by computer problems and no sound. Which seemed especially ironic after she introduced a piece called, "A Banjo bout Death". She left without being able to show anything.
Ninth was a flash videos about death euphemisms that kept playing as a leather pants man began to play a twelve string guitar.
I was pretty happy to get back into the streets to watch the crazy show called, 'new york city at night'.
The Emily Harvey Foundation - 537 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10012
http://www.emilyharveyfoundation.org/
http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/
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