Stereomongrel

From Between Two Deaths: If “hybridity” has become a celebratory word in much of contemporary art, if “hybridity” has become a celebratory word in much of contemporary art, then Stereomongrel (2005) by Luis Gispert and Jeffrey Reed questions this celebration. They do not do this, of course, because they want to endorse a return to a discourse of purity. Rather, within the glamorous, high-production-value world of their videos and pictures, what we are confronted with is not so much a celebration, but a meditation on what one could call “causality.” It is a complex effort that operates on different levels simultaneously, beginning with the artistic level of the produced image—of the called-upon “stereotypes” that belong to the social space and the people (us) that inhabit it—followed by the level of art-historical discourse and its issues with “genius” and inclusion, or its claims to objectivity and setting standards. Lastly, one is confronted with the level of subjectivity, for lack of a better word, which is given a “role” within the narrativized structure of the video and made visible and palatable through the young girl that the tale follows. The story begins in the luxurious but unhappy upper middle-class home of a girl of “mixed” racial heritage. Already, the denotation of “race” is put into question, for the girl is not two halves; she is one individual. However, she is also an “offspring,” someone who is coming from somewhere and going somewhere else. The video follows her through the streets of what looks like New York. She winds up in one of the temples where the high-priests of art collect the donations to their gods in order to produce a reference which is called on to judge, particularly all those who are excluded. For the very existence of the museum produces a turn around: it is not the high priests who have to justify that which has been collected and, from within that select group, what is shown. It is they who are not shown who have to justify why they are not included. This is the logic of power, any power: while it produces the place from which one speaks, it puts the onus of legitimizing oneself squarely on the shoulders of the subject thus produced. The purpose of Gispert and Reed’s work is to show that what we see and how we are seen is not a logical sequence in time, but rather overlapping images which can all, in fact, occupy the same place and time, even while they are actually different and sequential. This is what “Stereomongrel” refers to, without exhausting it: there is no “mono” in perception or the thought—the “I”—that “accompanies all our representations” (Kant). Any “I,” while it does refer to an individual, also refers to layers and layers of images, identifications which produced this “I,” or that are, in fact, this “I.” These identifications come from all sides, from parents, at first, and later from social reality and its norms. To put it in the nutshell which Gispert and Reed carefully construct, for an artist, these identifications come first from their parents—and the social reality with which they are confronted—and then later from the museum. This is one way to dissolve the “stereo” into its components, but this is legitimate only if one immediately follows it up with a negation: it is not itself “true,” but rather points towards a truth. “Mongrel,” of course, is a derogatory term. It has a long history of being used not simply as a word, but indeed as a weapon. “Words” are the most effective way to bring you down. But aside from these words there are also images which are tied to words and which, in turn, tie words to realities: the realities that words and images together produce and which we inhabit. These realities are made up of ready-mades, of stereotypes, ideas, and images that, in a sense, produce us much more than they are them selves products of us, of individuals. Gispert and Reed, however, are not didactic. Rather, they dwell on the joy of these images, the beauty and the pleasure of finding oneself in them, and then finding oneself in them again. However, by giving us a narrative to follow, they also lead us to a point where this recognition falters. There is no smooth transition between the young “mongrel” girl and the institutions with which she is confronted—whether it be the family or, more pertinently, the “museum,” i.e., the structures of power that define and divide. One does not simply “enter” an institution; one is either subjected by it, or one affirms a fundamental difference that is not negotiable. In the end, Gispert and Reed raise a question: if this is the power that confronts the girl, what are the means by which she may confront this power? Their answer, while certainly not meant to be conclusive or final, is complex: there is no “outside” from which to enter or in which to be. The individual has to pass through these identifications, to go through the images which make up him or her and which produce the perceptions in which and through which he or she lives. But there is a point when this continuity breaks down, when simple repetition fails. It is this point at which art—art that understands these dynamics and does not turn the other cheek—literally enters the picture, the picture of the subject, the picture that it makes of itself. FELIX ENSSLIN