November 2009

The performance consists of Rasmussen’s physical interpretation of seven poems, written by the early modernist poet Mina Loy, and by the artist herself. Loy’s words underscore the work with rich symbolic imagery, while Rasmussen’s sharper tone brightens and provokes. By bringing these distinct voices together in dialogue, Rasmussen celebrates the influence of Futurism on her work while using it as a point of reference to orient herself within the landscape of feminist performance.

Having been plied with cheap champagne and terrible, terrible live muzak, we were now offered further refreshments, namely water, whiskey and meatballs. This last combination was a particularly deft touch. It’s an impressive installation, most notably in the presence of a small, manufactured pond in the corner of the gallery behind a wall of fake plants. The pond is lit intermittently by a light linked to a sound installation that alternates between jungle cats mating and ‘the dying market calling out desperately the features and amenities that once made it great.’

Orson Wells was quoted on Switzerland; Marilyn Monroe was quoted on Hollywood. The resumes of First Ladies were listed, as were all of the artists that Peggy Guggenheim is said to have slept with. The audience was bombarded with the words and images of Basquiat, Warhol, Becket, Oprah, James Frey, Hitler, Josephine Baker and Adolf Loos. What began as skepticism on my part melted into an appreciative transfixion. Within minutes, I began attempting to anticipate the images that would correspond with the narration.

This misrecognition is especially striking in the documentary images of his performances; here the mind, confronting one his signature tableau, immediately leaps to the most breathtaking and unsavory conclusions. For a moment, we find ourselves looking at an image of unimaginable horror, but then the slow reconstruction of what one is actually seeing. No, that is not a person, it’s a doll, and that is not some terrible mixture of fluid and excrement, but mustard and chocolate. And on and on until we can actually see both images at once, the one we thought we were looking at and the one we actually are. Who, we ask ourselves, taught us to see such things?