Adam Leech, Bjorn Melhus, Caveh Zahedi: Uncommon Truths
Triangle Project Space
- Jennifer Davy -
Why? Why find someone like you? asks the interviewer in Adam Leechs The Twins Interview (2004). The answer, we might surmise, is validationa common truth in all three single-channel video works included in Uncommon Truths at the Triangle Project Space. Curator Jennifer Jankauskas juxtaposes stylistically divergent pieces by Leech, Bjrn Melhus and Caveh Zahedi, who all investigate how individuals forge their identity in relation to the people they surround themselves with, writes Jankauskas in the exhibitions press release.
In Zahedis documentary The World is a Classroom (2001), the classroom becomes a site for experimentation and investigation of identity and social relations and, effectually, an allegory for society at large. In the fall of 2001, Zahedi was a visiting professor at the San Francisco Art Institute. Seeing art and life as synonymous, Zahedis documentary is of the class itself, which opens with the artist addressing his students and outlining the objectives for the course. Making a comparison to group therapy, Zahedi sets relationships as the class topic.
Each section opens with the date rendered in a white typeface against a black screen. The third class, 9/11/01, is nothing more than a title screen followed by the next class session, which becomes a poignant record of intimacy and exchange as students react to the terrorism, global politics, fear and death. Surreptitiously, life has taken over the exchange and, true to Zahedis ideology, determines the direction of the documentary.
Building upon the sense of community developed through this discussion, Zahedi proposes an exercise in which everyone physically moves around the room, interacting with and reacting to one another like a dance. Daniel, one of the students, is overheard criticizing the exercise. An argument ensues between him and Zahedi, which begins a subsequent breakdown in social order within this small community.
Bjrn Melhus, Still from The Oral Thing, 2001
DVD transfer from video
8 minute loop
Courtesy Roebling Hall, Brooklyn, New York
The theoretical climax is in the next sequence, which documents the rising tension within the group as the power struggle between Zahedi and Daniel unfolds. Ultimately, Daniel refuses to either participate or withdraw. Others take turns reacting to this situation, expressing angst, despair and impatience with the conflicts dominance over the class. Ironically, one student draws a parallel between their situation and recent events of paralyzing terror.
The last session is the conflicts resolutionand the participants validation. As per Daniels request, he and Zahedi meet privately to address their conflict. In the following class meeting, they share their resolve, concluding that Daniel had legitimate grievances, and Zahedi apologized for [his] anger. Daniel signs a release form accepting participation in Zahedis documentary; pent up pressure is immediately released. Zahedi verbally underscores the importance of the conflict and its resolution as an allegory: it was real, it was the class and it is the documentary.
Entirely unreal, Bjrn Melhus parodies and exploits the conventions of daytime talk shows and televangelist programs. The artist sets up a confrontation between two pseudo-human guests and a supernatural host, or Showmaster, in The Oral Thing. The artist plays all three characters: the futuristic evangelist/talk show host and two androgynous, limbless guestsvictim and victimizerfor whom he serves as mediator. Adopting the trappings, staging and branding common to TV shows, Melhus also invents a canned audiencea group of digitally cloned, artificial monks and a graphic logo incorporated in an introductory animation. For the logo, Melhus appropriates the Olympic rings in silver, red and blue to create an ironic icon; each ring and color corresponds to one of the characters.
Adam Leech, Still from The Twins Interview, 2004
DVD transfer from video
2:10 minute loop
Caveh Zahedi, Still from The World is a Classroom, 2001
DVD
14 minutes
The Showmaster appears in the opening sequence, costumed in a synthetic, sparkling silver robe. He delivers an introduction, repeating phrases that promise a big surprise just beforelike all sensationalist television programsbreaking for a commercial. In this case, its not an actual commercial but a cutaway to the logo. After being engulfed by a burst of light, the Showmaster reappears on a space-age digital set. Floating down a set of stairs to center stage, he introduces his guests who burst in from either side of the screen in red and green orbs.
OK, I got a big surprise. Can you think about this? All right. All right, here she is! Sexually active and far too promiscuous, all right? Standing between his two guests, the Showmaster provokes and manipulates confessions of sex, violence and incest. Each scene is punctuated by reactions from the audience in choral unisonthe choir. Sampling dialogue from The Maury Povich Show, Melhus gives his characters and audience a voiceor voice-overreplayed slightly out of sync, emphasizing a lack of identity and fictionalized personas. Short isolated phrases, repeated and taken out of context, deny and agitate the confessional arena. Sequentially, the dialogue dissolves into a pathetic and banal banter in which the characters desperate need to be heard and validated becomes ominous and perverse.
Much more subtle, The Twins Interview narrates Adam Leechs experiment in identity through the juxtaposition of sound and text. Text appears as a transcription cast along the bottom of the screen like subtitles, while in the upper-left-hand corner a timer counts down from 2:10the interviews duration. The addition of a count down is curious, like a disclaimer for the impatient spectator. Within two minutes and ten seconds, the audience will get a complete story and its analysis, the sense of which occupies more time than its disclosure.
The opening statement in Leechs piece, So I had this idea that I wanted to go out and find people that when I saw them, I somehow also saw myself, is both the catalyst for his piece and its central question about identity. After failed attempts at finding a collaborator, Leech convinces Willy Ross from the Limited For Men clothing store to participateto accompany him to an art opening because he inhabits a particular quality. (Ross particular quality is his resemblance to the artist.) Whereas others thought Leechs look-alike contest was silly or perverse, Ross is not made aware of the artists intentions and is presumably unaware of their similar appearance.
Not wanting the piece to be specifically about himself or his multiples, Leech asks Ross to bring a date. He also finds another version of himself, Sara, at Restoration Hardware. The two couples attend the art opening dressed in matching outfits.
The interview ends by questioning the artists intentions and, subsequently, identity and identifying. Leech proposes that one seek validation through identifying with similar people as opposed to the interviewers assertion that happiness is found in similarities and uniquenessnot in similarities and sameness.
Fortunately, the navet of the closing dialogue is balanced by an uncanny image of the couples. For a short moment, the two couples appear in a still taken at the opening they attended together. It is the only image we see in the video and concludes the piece without any accompanying sound or text. Familiarity with the couples superficial identities becomes unbelievably peculiar as two minutes and ten seconds of expectation expands and unfolds in one still image of uncommon commonality.
Uncommon Truths presents the underlying realities of identity as a constructed expanse of experience, confrontation and multiple incarnations realized in both private and public contexts. Melhus, Zahedi and Leech all address the self, the other and the group as an interface for validation. Jankauskas certainly goes out on a limb juxtaposing such drastically different artists in a small, intimate exhibition. But the show works and its approach is refreshing, widening the arena for narrow, ber-themed shows.