Primate Culture and the Futile Uncool

Before I even got inside Kai Lin gallery to scope out Greg Mike’s Popstars and Cokeheads show it was clear the place was packed with pretty people (Pw/PP). Though unrelated, this seemed strangely incongruous with my car’s still mangled left headlight. In the thirty minutes I was there, I probably spent about thirty seconds actively looking at the art on display, such was the Adobe illustrator-ish simplicity of the work in comparison to the heaving mass of neon, black leather, and spandex-prone fashionistas. I haven’t been out much recently and it was a refreshing spectacle; one couldn’t walk ten feet without running into an apprentice popstar or a burgeoning cokehead. I saw some man pants so taut they made my scrotum wince. I was relieved when I spotted Sean Falyon, who was in an Adolf Dassler jacket that blended seamlessly with the art behind him. It took me a moment to register that he was camouflaged in fuschia. We caught up on recent events and he introduced me to some people he knew. I knew my time was up as the crowd consensus veered towards ‘let’s go to the afterparty at Halo.’ The last time I was there, about two years ago, my tab was traumatic and a blatantly siliconed lady I’d just met tried to pawn me off on her tearful friend, like I was supposed to somehow fix the situation.

I drove a few blocks, parked and went down some slippery stairs into the netherworld of Archive gallery. A dense cloud of smoke hovered by the ceiling as several people were smoking inside. Adding to my art viewing difficulties was the fact that the place was dimly lit. This didn’t seem to deter the duct tape and cigarette-scented folks who were hanging out. I touched base (don’t you just hate that term) with Ben Grad who was one of the photographers showing. I saw a car-light-streak-photo-collage piece titled ‘Squids’ that instantly made it into my vault of long term memory. I found a dark corner (there were several) and listened briefly to a band performing. During a break between songs the lead singer/guitarist said something like, “I lost my job to play this show. My boss said if I didn’t work tonight he’d have to fire me, and I’m here now… We’ve got some CDs, they’re free, but if you want to pay for them, that would be great too.” I checked his palms for stigmata, but none were visible.

Unlike the previous two stops, I’d been to Picaflor once before. I remember finding a stray wallet on the street, which the door person successfully returned to its owner. I’m still awaiting my karmic compensation, but something tells me it doesn’t work that way. I caught up with Ryan McGookey and John Katz, fellow Emory alumns I randomly run into about once every three months. John was by the door chatting to a pretty brunette who seemed to be in charge. I didn’t want to pay to get in and with some help from John she was kind enough to indulge me. I ran into Mike Germon and we realized we’d been to the same places with me lagging about half an hour behind. We toyed with the idea of doing a collaborative blog about the night, but for whatever reason that petered out. That’s probably for the best, the more I think about it the more collaborative writing seems like an awful idea.

[ Total Digression ]

My sister Tinashe recently recommended I watch a few films by Rahim Bahrani. I’ve since seen Goodbye Solo and Chop Shop. They’re both unrelenting films about the hardscrabble lives of first generation immigrants in the US. Chop Shop has no soundtrack at all which gives it an attritional cumulative weight that becomes discomfiting as we see the main character struggle against the socio-economic tide with little hope of success. Goodbye Solo dangles the carrot of a potential happy ending to the central character’s travails, before ending abruptly when his cab disappears out of view, leaving us with a vacant feeling of unresolved absence. Chop Shop teases in similar fashion with the hope that buying a decrepit van to cook and sell food out of will be the first step towards a better life. Maybe then Isamar can stop selling late night favors to truckers up the street. But there’s no neat ribbon ending, the films just end, and all one can do is turn to hulu for a sitcom to clear one’s palette.

These aren’t fun films. Even in the horror genres, they’re something awfully stimulating about the repulsive gore, or just straight up wrongness on screen. The two films I’ve seen thus far engaged me in a way a documentary on the same topics wouldn’t have. Documentary narrators are like tour guides, having that intermediary instantly creates more distance than presenting it as a frank but ‘fictional’ narrative. I watched Goodbye Solo and Chop Shop to be entertained, but was more engaged and hyper-alert when I didn’t get my cotton candy. Both films seem to have the traditional narrative arc until about halfway through when that frame of reference becomes untenable. Goodbye Solo has one visually beautiful scene shot in the North Carolina Mountains during autumn, but other than that they employ minimal artifice. I got the sense Bahrani could have used more bells and whistles, but chose to abstain from doing so. Some of his directorial decisions (according to imdb he even named the main characters with the actors’ real names) reminded me a lot of Dogma films and their rigid ‘un-cinematic’ ideology. Which in turn reminds me of the Stuckists. Neither of these groups are mere luddites or primitivists. They’re not so much about resisting ‘progress’ as fending off what they may see as perversions of the core ethos of the arts by those with a stake in doing so. If that’s the case, then it makes sense that the Dogme manifesto reads like the film equivalent of the Stuckist manifesto as both seem to be responses to the industrialization (the increasing emphasis on technology and capital in lieu of storytelling and hand-craftsmanship) of the arts, epitomized by the likes of Jeff Koons’ manufactured objects and James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’.