Bentham's Lolita
Sad to say great dialogue about ideas at gallery openings are hard to come by. No worries mate, the SFAI spring lecture series and Glen Helfand bring exceptional and interesting thoughts to the table.
The latest highlight was a remarkable presentation by artist Jill Magid. During her talk the one word she used the most was “intimacy”. The work described in detail at an intricate website (her name dot net) was illuminated by the narrative of last wednesday's presentation. The creative strategies she adopts are not exclusively linked to surveillance media but pervasive to say the least.
In an early example at MIT in Cambridge, MA, she hijacks a closed-circuit monitor in a student union to project images from a button-hole camera inside her clothes. A normally passive announcement screen is then transformed into a video-noir performance vehicle. As she stands in front of the monitor dragging the "spy-camera" across her body people walk through the public space watching the progress of the camera. In a video documenting this the audience does not realize she is the subject of the physical examination even while her hands oddly move under her sweater and pants. At the end of this video she explained that the resulting appearance of dumbfounded police and guards provided inspiration for future work.
In Europe after unsuccessfully proposing an art project to a Dutch police station artist Magid creates a security consultancy to convince the authorities to let her decorate their video cameras with colored rhinestones.
Following this adventure she travels to England where she makes a legal request to Liverpool authorities to retrieve her image every day for 30 days as she appears on cameras around town. This flowers into a direct interaction with observing police officers who eventually, as Magid explains furnish her with a microphone to communicate with her observer in real time. Cinematic elements emerge as she directs the operators to zoom in on her, choose angles based on “film theory”, and guide her around travel around a town square with her eyes closed. The culminates in a finale ride around the city on the back of a police motorcycle which ends with Magid and her horseman riding into the sunset off the surveillance grid.
The second frequently used word during her lecture was “romance”. It seems the implication here is romantic love: love from afar, honorable love, etc. Combined with intimacy in this context Magid seems to be (consciously or not) attempting to impart a seduction of her would be Panoptic lovers. The Panopticon is a prison design by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham [1785] which allowed a warden to observe all prisoners without them being able to tell whether they were being watched. One pop culture idealization of such a place would be the short-lived TV series the Prisoner. The difference here is that the prisoner draws the warden in not to so much to escape but to feed back the observations. Other surveillance art calls into question the effectiveness or viability of omniscient surveillance but the melodrama surrounding these pieces create a very legible atmosphere.
Magid’s M.O. is to first subvert the veil hiding the observer then turn the act of observation into something less solitary. In an even more recent work she returns to the post-911 America and this time it's even more personal or intimate. Approaching a homeland security officer she convinces him to "teach" her his job. Elements of danger, intrigue, and also banality infuse the process and resulting pieces (pictures and a book) entitled “Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy” - "LOVE" using the phonetic radio alphabet. Here she forges a complex relationship documented in a narrative diary whle she sits with this cop on his stakeouts at New York subway stops to guard the tunnel entrances.
Becoming a subject within her work is an important element and best exemplified in the work “Auto Portrait Pending”. This piece will not be fully realized until Magid’s death when she has planned to have her remains turned into a diamond. The sentimentalism of this bizarre yet feasable context is upended by a requisite contractual relationship between her and the diamonds potential future owner transfomring Magid into pending property. The romantic and imtimate are so interestingly fused that if I manage to live long enough I’d want to own it/her.
Let’s hope SFAI continues with these very interesting talks.
For more information about Jill Magid go to www.jillmagid.net
The SFAI lectures are being held throughout the spring mostly on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7:30pm for more information go to this website.
http://www.sfai.edu/Event/Events.aspx?navID=261§ionID=7
