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Perhaps the year I spent working at a comic book store has damaged my brain irrevocably ("What if...Wolverine was a midget, What if...Peter Parker were never bitten by a spider, but had been bitten by a radioactive raccoon, etc.), but the Homi K. Bhabha piece got me thinking: Would Plath's poetry be considered "victim art" had she not ultimately succeeded in her attempts to take her own life? Obviously, the poem was written pre-mortem, between suicide attempts. At the time of Lady Lazarus' completion, how would the piece have read? Can listening to Nirvana be considered bomping along to Victim Music?
Arlene Croce placed heavy emphasis upon Bill Jones' status as an HIV positive gay man, as well as the death of Jones' lover (and former collaborator) of AIDS. Had Jones, himself, not been infected, where would Croce have stood? Though Jones was not the only HIV positive participant, presumably his health status alone could have affected whether or not Jones as artist and "Still/Here" as art piece had been absorbed by the AIDS quilt (Croce, 25), as Croce so tastefully puts it. Could this be the dilemma of artist as person vs. artist as Artist/"real life" vs. "studio life"?
As an aside:
Arlene Croce makes tireless mention of the limitations produced by the narcissism of self in regards to art while seemingly unaware of her own narcissism of self as critic.
Interesting...do you think Croce places emphasis on it or Jones, BAM, and his audience place emphasis on it his biography?
ReplyDeleteI can give one immediate response to the "what if" - had a dancer or choreographer without an authentic connection to the AIDS crisis presented a work like "Sill/Here" audiences would have ridiculed it and no presenting company would have come with in miles of it. Even now, fully 15 years later there are arguments over who gets to talk about touchy subjects like race or class or discrimination. Examples?
http://www.channelapa.com/2009/05/last-airbender-movie-boycott-paramount.html