Hitting the G20-Spot

In September 2009, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania hosts the G-20 summit. Fe Gallery in the district of Lawrenceville stages an exhibition at this time called “G-Spot”. The artists involved were part of the Visionary Arts Festival, which, was organized by Alberto Almarza.

Estlack Sensory Products’ contribution to the show is a portrait of Milton Friedman. It is a mural, painted directly on the wall, with a sculptural element. This work is part of a series of disjunctive mediation works (social commentaries) that are aimed at topical subjects. The work contains an acronym “MF”, which can stand for a variety of words. It could be the subject’s initials. It could stand for “monetary fund” as in IMF. Alternatively, it could be used as an insult, as in “motherfucker”. All of these associations are intended to be read in this work.

The composition is a montage of a variety of elements. There is an official portrait (photograph) of Friedman. There is iconography from United States currency, in the form of Victorian style framing treatments and typography. There is a protruding phallus emerging from the wall, and painted splatters in pink throughout the composition. When the viewer observes the entire work, the combined shapes resemble a sperm cell. There is an array of sexual and political messages throughout the work.

Etymology

Milton Friedman was an economist and leader of what was called the “New Chicago School” of economics. Recently, much talk has been made about “predatory lending” practices with regard to the housing market and the worldwide “economic crisis”. If you could extrapolate this phenomenon, and apply it to relationships between world economies during the 60’s through the 80’s, you would have a similar scenario. Milton Friedman’s ideas and strategies were at the core.

Economists emerging from the new Chicago school, found positions “helping” economically depressed societies to find their way out of the economic hardships they were facing. These were countries like Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Poland and so on. You might recall that a year or two ago, Bolivia’s President refused to accept economic help from the United States. Perhaps the forthcoming remarks will shed some light on that situation. At any rate, the Chicago School’s method of “help” involved developing an economic “plan” (which was usually described by its proponents as a bomb) to “help grow” the economy of these countries. Here’s how it typically worked:

1. 3rd World government takes a loan (with interest) from the IMF or World Bank


2. 3rd World government agrees to lift sanctions on American corporate activity in 3rd World country


3. American corporations set up factories in 3rd World country


4. American factory attracts hungry and starving workers


5. American corporation pays the workers just enough to keep them coming back to work
   
6. 3rd World country workers organize and protest against their government’s economic plans


7. 3rd World government turns into a fascist dictatorship


8. 3rd World government begins terror campaign against workers to keep them under control


9. 3rd World government is left poorer than they were before the IMF loan

For more details, here are a few good resources:

• The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein


• The Real News


• The Anti Capitalistic Mentality – Ludwig Von Mises


• Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman has been quoted as stating that “economies flourish, when individuals have the freedom to pursue their aims” (very loosely quoted). This makes the “free market” sound like a very good thing. But, we need to pay very close attention to the word “individuals”. This is during a time when corporations are legally classified as individuals. Let’s get this straight. A corporation is made up of many individuals. If a real individual does something criminal, they might be brought through the judicial system. If that individual claims that one of the other “individuals” within their self told them to commit the crime, they can plea insanity (as in disassociative identity disorder or multiple personality). Therefore, some individuals (corporations included) have limited liability via the insanity plea.

Correlations between sexual reproduction, disease and the macroeconomic scenarios described previously are made throughout this work. Like a sperm into an egg, the economic “plans” developed by the Chicago School were inserted into these societies and exploded, releasing a whole set of programmatic outcomes, like the genetic code during the reproductive process. The head of the sperm is the portrait frame from the 1 Dollar Bill with Friedman’s head directly in the center.

Emerging from Milton Friedman’s nose is a wooden, painted phallus. The phallus is painted with bubbles and wrinkles, to suggest disease, warts or age. The placement also suggests both the subculture of experimental sexuality and circus clowns. These associations are read as being comic, exciting or disturbing. Depending on whom you ask, people have these mixed reactions to clowns and experimental sex. Therefore, these subjects are generally not addressed publicly in American culture. Clowns tend to be associated exclusively with public entertainment for children. Experimental sex tends to be associated exclusively with private entertainment for adults. The combination of the two sets up an uncomfortable comparison in our cultural psychology.

There are pink paint splatter textures cascading down from the portrait. These suggest bodily fluids emerging from the subject’s nose, or the phallus. These splatter shapes also form the flagellum of the sperm shape. The color is intended to suggest excitement, celebration, orgasm or sarcasm. It’s linked symbolically to the head of the phallus, implying disease being spread around and making a mess; very much like volatile economies such as those of the United States.

The acronym “MF” is derived from a 1 Dollar bill. The typography is unmistakable as that which is used on American currency. The “motherfucker” association can be interpreted in a variety of ways. We often use this language to insult someone. Symbolically, one can make the jump to “mother earth”, seeing as how Friedman’s economics have played a pivotal role in the degradation of human lives in many cultures. Our offense at this term must relate to the archetypal mothers, such as Mother Earth or the Virgin Mary. It points to the absurdity in western culture where sexual expression is treated with shame or embarrassment. (For further examples of this, Joseph Campbell makes many comparisons between the treatment of natural processes in many different cultures)

My father offered an eastern perspective on this term once, when someone called him a “motherfucker”. He laughed and said “they must know me”. He is a “motherfucker” after all: he is my biological father.

Billy is Tested in D.C.

Recently, I participated in an Exhibition called "In the Flesh II" at the Torpedo Factory’s “Target Gallery”. As I understood it, the curatorial position was to highlight the various ways contemporary artists were exploring the implications of figurative art.

This exhibition was reviewed by Shauna Lee Lange, who seems to be the leading art commentator in the area. The review (click here for full version) illustrates the problem many journalists face; the overall pressure to write voluminous commentary without the time to thoroughly review that which you are to review. Many resort to sound bytes and Wikipedia for the needed nuggets of information. Frank Zappa was often quoted as saying (of Music journalism) that it was "written by people who couldn't write, for people who couldn't read". Fortunately, unlike folks like Anna Politkovskaya and Shi Tao, Art critics and Music critics don't run the risk of assassination or imprisonment for exercising their right to misinterpret or gloss-over the facts.

I stopped subscribing to ArtNEWS, because all it was telling me about were some factoids that collectors and their ilk wanted me to hear. Periodically, you hear this kind of commentary leak out into different sectors of the regionalist art sphere. Let's face it. Art is not an easy way to make a buck. So, sometimes you need a representative to say, this stuff is stylish, this stuff ain't (er I mean, isn't). Most of the artists I know are interested in making enough coinage to keep their concepts afloat. So, the ArtNEWS target audience tends to be collectors, and people making "Art" for collectors. Headlines read something like "the Neo-Expressionism average is up 3.7 points this week” or something like that. I'm not in that target audience.

When you peruse the commentary written by representatives of the illumined ones, you try to get an idea for their frame of reference. “From what philosophical framework are they drawing their conclusions?“ is usually a question at the forefront of my mind, for example. I had a certain degree of difficulty in ascertaining what aesthetic position led the author to her conclusions regarding “Billy the Test Subject” and the curator’s decision in it’s entry into the exhibition. The statement below quoted from Shauna Lee Lange's essay: “target gallery’s in the flesh II: hands, eyes and upholstery?” The title of the article and quotation (below) are pasted directly from the source. So, missing capitalizations in the title and the clumsy syntax do exist in the published document.

Pennsylvania’s Tom Estlack offers gypsum cement poplar Billy the Test Subject. It was at this unfortunate point that I started to get aggravated. There is nothing wrong with Estlack’s construction of a gothic-headed zombie-creature and it certainly has its own audience, however I could not for the life of me make the connection to the show’s theme. A disappointment only in that regard, Estlack is not well served in this venue.

Evidently, her readership must be quite concerned about her emotional state, at any given point. To state, without provocation, that "there's nothing wrong" with something is a passive-aggressive way of implying that that you think there's something wrong with something. I also think I detected a hidden slam at the visual art idiom known as Pop-Surrealism. So, any of you losers who read Juxtapoz magazine or browse DeviantArt, and are reading this right now, check me out on Facebook, twitter and on my homepage and see if you'd like my other stuff! It's totally gnarly dude! The author also couldn’t figure out what the connection to the exhibition’s theme was, despite the fact that there was a figure right in the middle of the god-damned thing. Is this the leading voice in aesthetics in the D.C./Alexandria metro area? (Another review of this exhibition can be found here) She may have had a point about being better served by another venue. The Thai restaurant a few blocks from Target Gallery has some killer pad thai.

Now. What’s the piece all about?

As you can see by the photograph, the work is a cylinder with a modeled and cast head emerging from the top. "Billy the Test Subject" (as you might have guessed by the title) deals with testing on animals. The head looks somewhat human, suggesting a connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. The size of the head, in proportion to the cylinder would indicate that the figure's body is concealed within the cylinder. The cylinder has a brushed metal-looking texture. The appearance of this form is intended to resemble machinery. Consequently, when the two elements are juxtaposed, one might have the impression that the figure is trapped inside a mechanistic form. This refers to the entrapment of both human and animal in the mechanism of industry. The referents in this work are the mechanisms of scientific experimentation and testing.

The modeling of the head is intended to blur distinctions between human and animal forms. This is a direct reference to industrialized genetic experimentation being conducted on various animal and plant species. The singular reference in this instance is ANDi, the surviving (out of a number of failed attempts) rhesus monkey who had foreign proteins introduced into his DNA. The intent for this kind of work and other experiments (such as product testing and vivisection) is to study virus pathology. These practices are inhumane and are corrupting forces in our society. The human-other-animal hybrid form is a reminder of our psychological and spiritual connection to the non-human animals. It is also a grim reminder that scientists are actively pursuing the development of patented genetic hybrids whose genetic codes match those of humans, closely enough to achieve "accurate test results".

Should we depend on our cultural leaders to be aware of current events? I used to think so. But, being "aware" of current events is a problem, unto itself. We'll have to bring the ghosts of Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan in on that conversation. We can’t magically sprinkle pixie dust on a situation, have a glass of wine and watch our troubles disappear. Art is where our opinions are shaped and our imaginations are tested.

Special thanks to Andrea Pollan, Mary Cook and Allison Nance for their work on this show and the opportunity to participate.