ART

VOYEURS TO DISASTER

A daring "Acting Out" at Bard Hessel

By Piper H. Olivas

Acting Up and Out

Taking a step into the Bard Hessel museum’s recent show is not only visually overwhelming, but also intensely emotional. One might say that it’s staggering. The exhibit “Acting Out” takes its inspiration from artist Leigh Ledare’s The Task, a single-channel film that documents a three-day Group Relations Conference that the artist organized in Chicago in 2017.

Group relations is a social psychology method developed by London’s Tavistock Institute, a British not-for-profit organization that applies social science to contemporary issues and problems. The exhibit questions every aspect of what mainstream American culture deemed as controversial in the 80’s and 90’s. Graphic photographs portraying AIDS, racism, homophobia, women’s and African-American rights expose the discrimination many people faced. Across four large galleries, we experience the discontent that eight contemporary artists of the 80’s and 90’s felt in their united rejection of the social mores of the time.

Intellectuals

As we enter the exhibit, we’re confronted with a video installation featuring a diverse group of adults having a long talk. It’s the first part of this dynamic exhibit, although definitely not the most engaging part. I can understand the purpose behind the video, but it isn’t working in the same way the other pieces are. Listening to educated and opinionated intellectuals feels wrong for this kind of subject matter. We know that none of these psychologists have experienced the reality of these conditions and can’t speak from experience; instead, they’ve just studied it, which isn’t enough. The rawness in the imagery and context speaks for itself. Further in the gallery is where things really come alive, and we see work by artists that were actually there, experiencing and living through these times.

The exhibition was carefully curated by Tom Eccles, and artist Leigh Ledare and features 108 photographs, a video installation and a vitrine full of journals. Colossal Cindy Sherman prints and a collection of Nan Goldin’s most iconic photographs immediately capture and hold our attention. The next room features stills from Larry Clark’s controversial 80’s film Kids, alongside intimate journals by Lyle Ashton Harris, another photographer focusing on societal constructs. The exhibit opens up questions such as: what should and shouldn’t be seen; what’s the necessity of these images; wouldn’t they be better off staying in the cultural underground? Despite the legitimacy of these questions, these complex images grab your attention and beg for you to look at them. The real question is why do they draw us in so intensely?

Kids doing what kids do

The work presented is highly charged and linked to a wide array of contemporary issues and dynamic topics not often addressed in the stuffy, pretentious art world. That is what makes this show so rousing; these are things that we know exist, but we don’t often see. Think about the movie Kids, directed by Clark with a screenplay by teenage filmmaker Harmony Korrine. Kids attracted mainly positive reviews and unmasked the truth behind youth culture. Despite being lauded by many critics, negative reviews called it “banal” and “exploitative.” We know teenagers are having sex, experimenting with drugs and committing petty crime, but the dark horse that creeps up and annihilates this fantasy is the AIDS epidemic.

Kids made us all wonder how far fetched the film really was. HIV and drug use is also a thread seen in Goldin’s work, who documented her friends and the convoluted reckless lives they lived. Goldin herself often talked about wanting to “get high really young” and discussed the feeling behind the desire for disarray at a young age. Where Goldin and Clark meet is in their belief in the restorative aspects of youthful trouble and chaos.

We are all getting ready for something

When you’re young you’re impressionable and you feel like you’ve got a million years left to live. The consequences of destroying your body and getting in trouble feel like a low risk; and kids are raging to experience life and gain social acceptance from their peers. Youth culture, television, and peer pressure have an intense influence on a developing mind. In an aggressive progression, simple things like fun and recklessness turn into death and destruction. The reality of reckless city culture is that it often results in some kind of tragedy.

By the end of the film Kids, the viewer starts to realize nobody makes it out without some kind of negative aftermath. Goldin often speaks about how many of her friends and lovers are now six feet under. And yet somehow we enjoy the experience of watching this descent from fun and lively to ravaged lives. We are all voyeurs to disaster; it’s impossible not to be.

There are many endings

We see struggling drug addicts and wild teenagers every day on public transportation, in movies, television, on the street. When we see a prostitute we want to stare, and when we see a junkie it’s hard to look away. We are fascinated by the suffering of other people, perhaps it makes people satisfied that they aren’t in such a bad position. Or maybe we all have a sick attraction to the darker side of life. Maybe the urge to self destruct is in all of us, some of us are just better at containing urges. Regardless, we have a compulsion to wonder how they got there.

It’s important for us to look at these things, and "Acting Out" allows us to do so. These people deserve to be seen and acknowledged. Not just in popular culture or disregarded by the media. These images deserve a platform and they should be viewed with respect and empathy.

©Piper H. Olivas and the CCA Arts Review