Overturned Disposable Containers

2006-05-16T10:32:00.000-07:00

Nostalgic

1. Preservation of our artifacts is now so advanced that a reconciliation with our evanescence seems remote.

2. The horizon appears as a junkyard of flattened objects.

3. The acquisition of a glow directs their passing.

4. Their identification with celebratory mythologies must gradually be repressed for the knowledge built on them to be seen to be objective.

Semiotic

1. Four containers (human) as subordinates of the class ‘overturned’ are arrayed against a neutral background in a horizontal ellipse echoed by the white mouth of the yellow disposable overturned at the base of a pillar forming its axis.

2. Human heads form the dominant vectors North, East, West, South reiterated by overturned containers (disposable and returnable) forming the secondary vectors of the horizon; white verticals (pillar, chair legs) form strong contradistinguishing upright vectors.

3. The presence of Dummy Pointers signals the class: EXISTENTIAL.

4. The four conditions (as at the opening of The Book of Genesis): an abstract setting (the ovoid) -- a conventional symbol ("the emptied", "the overturned") -- the absence of eye contact with or among represented participants (conveying the property of myth) -- a high, oblique angle of view (the grammar of omniscience: the imperative ‘Behold!’ ) --are those in which narrative arises.

5. But the DIAGRAMMATIC (as dinner table seating arrangements, charted locations of statues, directions to toilets, etc) interposes to render that kind of knowledge most highly valued:

--the objective

--the dispassionate

--the free of emotive involvement

--the free of subjective identification.

Phone (Notice to Operators)

2006-02-28T13:34:00.000-08:00

1. The DIRECTIVE

The voice of the Phone directs attention to the erotic. The printed Notice—a dense but compact ‘brief’ of arguments—directs attention to intellectual propositions to do with:

(a) The need for the cum shot in pornography. The cum shot as an indicator of the nature of vicarious experience, as what we call Information…

(b) A treatment of the question of gender in pornography; the female body as a site or an unnecessary prop; the grounds for nomination of the telephone as a surrogate receiver (where one may ‘lift and pour forth’)…

(d) The pornographic event as vicarious, programmed experience similar to a laundry cycle [immersion-agitation-extraction].

2. The PEDANTO-EROTIC

Notice and Phone together form this rich didactic compound which is always either in readiness or in use, and to which one may step up and Get the Answer. Cf,

(a) The Notice relentlessly solicits ‘close reading’ with its pedantic display of puns on sex, rationalism, legal precedent, and pornography (incorporating at its heart the precise citation of a Supreme Court case involving bestiality).

(b) The Phone-sex voice relentlessly solicits autoerotic participation.

Question: Can we have experience or gain insight through vicarious means? That is, can we be satisfied by information?

3. The AUTOCRATIC

The anonymous printed Notice insists autocratically on a point of view contrary to that which it claims is ‘widely held’, and marshals in evidence a citation of legal pleadings.

The dialless Phone autocratically conducts what is normally reciprocal as a one-way monologue of commands and solicitations, also embedded with pleadings.

Together, they form a ‘language object’ that does nothing but autocratically solicit response.

The same conditions that apply to the experience of the art object apply here. The Payer of Attention with Phone to ear and eye on Notice can neither dial, be heard, make insertions, objections or amendments.

The Autocratic form sustains, theoretically, an endlessly available and repeatable experience unaltered by response.

4. The EXOTIC

Porn operates as an appliance like the washing machine, which produces a product that is processed and refreshed through a cycle of immersion, agitation and extraction. Through it, the mental body, like the suit of clothes, may be laundered. Thus, longing for intimate sexual contact with other flesh is converted to something agreeable with the spirit of public life (the practical transaction, the scheme of self-betterment, the self-directed, goal-oriented pursuit). In this context, flesh is made Exotic. The body put through its routines in pornography, demonstrates its fitness and readiness for the Exotic in a medium whose function is to display an inaccessible and thereby exotic physicality:

(a) We behold the ‘other’ body unfolding in the immediate future, with its heat and moisture and galvanic response—exotic and unavailable.

(b) We behold the poor body of the present—a soiled uniform in need of laundering.

Is this Didacticism? If so, is it Art?

If Porn is Sex, then its quality of being closed to change and the back-and-forth of reciprocal interaction is a marked deficiency. If it is Art, its fixed utilitarian function is problematic.

5. The COMPETITIVE

The phone-sex voice and the contrived artifice of the printed Notice compete for the attention of the Payer (the John), creating the back-and- forth of attention which is the essence of ‘Adult-Action’ .

6. The RHETORICAL

Information and pornography come together in the rhetoric of the Adult-Action film—whether it is the male ejaculating physically for the camera or the female ejaculating rhetorically for the microphone. It is impossible to prove which is in charge, or which holds greater sway in the arena of persuasion.

7. The SATIATING

Eye and ear come together to get the answer as Payers of Attention are offered simultaneous active and passive roles—on the one hand to read and think, and on the other to hear and fantasize. A fully satiating experience combining urge and goal with no body required.

8. The INFORMATIVE

The body demonstrating its fitness for contact, but not present for contact, is strictly information, just as the function of this installation is strictly that of Informant—affording the set for hidden cameras and microphone to ‘read’ and ‘listen’ to uninformed visitors, trying to get the answer.

Thought Into Being

Overturned Disposable Containers

Phone (Notice to Operators)