i added a photo of robert gober's lactating jesus that i snuck a pic of while waiting in line to peek thru a bathroom door at plaster (i think--they were all white) figurines in a bath tub...i couldn't decide which i liked better this or the fruit bowls/punch bowls on a little platform....what confused me about this image was you had jesus on a cross with water pouring out holes in his chest then the area was roped off and there was a plastic lawn chair what looked like 4 light bulbs and some other thing plopped on the floor...i don't know what it all meant but i'm so tired of robert gober's newspaper obsession that i loved this...
i actually went to catch the east village show...which had a couple good things--the video for death valley 69 because in terms of like psycho-splatter art there is no better than richard kern and so he's a reference for my thesis and i'd forgotten about him....and i got to see some of flaming creatures...and then there was a video of the first love ball and it was some guy walking around with nightlife people and it was creepy because i used to know all of the people in the video at one time in my life...and someone goes who's that? and i actually knew--stephen saban who used to write for details when it was about the club scene...and he was nice just not interesting....there was actually a lot missing from that show...someday i'm gonna curate my own EV show cuz they never explained for instance why all the bases of lampposts were covered in shards of ceramics--they didn't have pictures of all these great bottle trees and stufed animal sulptures that used to be on ave b and ca 6th and ave c....and they didn't have videos by tom rubinitz who made the first video of wigstock but died of aids and they had things about pyramid but not boy bar...or lots of other things like these great videos that exist of rupaul as starbooty--some of those were made when they were still in atlanta but i was happy to see ann magnusson and photos by a friend of mine ande whyland--she used to bartend at boy bar and she and her girlfriend dany were like original club 57 people and i used to write this horrible nightlife column but the best column i think that we ever did was when we interviewed them and got an oral history of nightlife on the lower east side....and the EV show had a "back to life" issue of my comrade which used to be a great zine and you'd flip it over and the other side was sister! edited by dany but the issue at the new museum didn't have that...which was too bad...but all in all i'm glad i got my butt down there finally cuz now i have richard kern to add to my messy influence list...and some of the arch connelly things covered in beads were great...i love the intro text the EV was at its heyday 1981-1987--i'm like typical i missed it by one year...oh yeah and no rocknroll fag bar which is where night of 1000 stevies started.. no act up....see that's the thing about the EV that the show missed sort of-- it isn't the art objects per se that are important but rather that people tried to live their lives as art...and so it was about people and not about paintings or graffiti or whatever...and so much of it you had to experience like you had to experience karen finley live...i will never forget seeing her on valentine's day at pyramid naked and covered in chocolate and throwing out those hearts with dumb phrases on them into the audience....yelling fuck you...it was a moment...and now it's a memory and how many moments have passed into memories and I guess that's how you know you are aging but it is odd how deeply unaware I am of the movement of time…probably explains why I'm always late…
Leave it to Forgotten NY to answer the east village lamp post mystery.
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/crockery/crockery.html
Posted by: anthony | March 21, 2005 at 10:11 PM