27/05/2017
PARIS IS BURNING
“Okay, so picture this, we’re in Rome. It’s the Italy of today, you know with like, everybody either buried in their phone, or distancing themselves from the thing with those sticks. And tennis shoes are obviously everywhere, you know. But then mixed in are some art student types. They’re beautiful. I mean they’re beautiful in that their clothes hang right and, like, all the girls have boy haircuts and the guys are making a display of their cigarette smoking. Their talk is more about Marx then Freud.
“So it’s Rome. With Vespas and espressos. It’s the crumbling ruins getting everyone in the mood for poetry, as if there’s some divine parallel between ruined buildings and poetics, you know? Like, outside the demands of the dominant situation, which is imploring you, 'just buy more plastic'… that outside all the garbage is, like, a few art student types who have their antennae, you know, up because they’re habitually smoking dope so they’re sensitive to the call, I don’t know, and they know the ruins, the fu***ng burned down old monuments, signify a triumph of inactivity. Not inactivity exactly,” he pauses to relight the failed cigarette, “but you know like, triumphs over usefullness. Right?” He draws an arc with his fork. “The poetic is a body triumphing over usefullness. Like, like what? Like the world just wants you to work and toil, and make the cashola to buy the condo, and never get around finishing Proust?” His lunch companion Noemi is listening, she reassures him, working not to look at the gentle Great Dane now come within petting distance, his head like a loaf of bread she has in mind to grasp.
“Okay. You’re with me so far? It’s Rome, now, but Rome now is like Rome anytime, do you know the new Gucci ads, right? The astronomical symbology played out across these great with-it type models who could be from 1920 or 2020; models who know that just dressing themselves akin to being fu***ng Bruce Nauman, or whatever. Goddamn it.” The Great Dane’s tail has presently found a sturdy beat and blissfully it’s played on a leg of their table. And now a happy maneuver–warm haunch leaned heavy against Noemi, her glee is beginning to show: he’s so big!
“So underneath, in the underground is a club. When I say underground I don’t mean 'underground' in the way Dostoyevsky meant it, inertia of spirit, and I don’t mean 'the' underground, like the Velvet Underground or the Weather Underground, or like underground as alternative to the expecation our culture scripts for us, right? No, I mean underground in the literal sense, like under all this s**t, all those blocks of crumbling monuments, under history itself there’s a place to go, to gab. A club, to go, to rant. To both exist in and for the ideological distinction of under-ness. Look, life is just, you know, there’s too many bodies and they’re all acting like it’s their right to exist with equalized potential for wealth accumulation, or whatever, but they look like fu***ng ogres, miserable, with nothing to say to each other, right, except did you see the last episode of whatever, and I’m saying , I want off that ride.”
The Great Dane’s nametag is made visible to Noemi: it says, Noemi. No, way! What are the chances, she thinks, staring into the beautiful canine face executing a proud yawn with not a little pageantry–profound teeth, magnificent tongue curl, delicate wiggle, dank yet sweet mouth scent.
“It’s like a club for intellectuals, or what used to be called intellectuals, because we both know the category is essentially no longer useful, been co-opted to sell a conception of media non-bias, you know, but what if there was a club, like a salon, where underground art thinkers, could go. Wasn’t that our destiny? Wasn’t all of modernism about just this idea, of the individual erupting via the unity of like thinkers? What happened to movements in art? Ok, so I don’t know, maybe it’s just like a place to watch a movie and talk about it, like a film in the company of other people and not a film streamed to your fu***ng goddamn fu***ng pocket, like a film you could watch with other people and you could break the silence that exists between man and his fellow traveler, to break in and say, 'within this I witnessed us too',” he lifts the empty espresso cup to his lips and then returns it to the saucer.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. We could do it, just have people over. Like, come watch this fu***ng whatever, Paris is Burning, anything, and let’s do it and be present and not be ashamed of the desire for camaraderie, you know. This is Rome. It’s amazing shame could even exist here. Do you know? Shame! It’s like the end of the art impulse. Like why are we putting fig leaves on our ideas? Can’t we just look at dicks? A little marble dick corrupted no one. Have you ever noticed that fig leaves actually smell like urine? Do you think that’s why they thought it should cover genitals?”
-Alan Reid
Garbo's is a project which aims to create a transversal space, a meeting point, to discuss and explore varied contemporary art practices.
