rock-opera “Don’t trust anyone over Thirty”
With the support of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art
Contemporary, the Vienna Festival augmented its 2005 programme with a
theatrical music ‘entertainment’ that defies categorisation into any
standard genre like opera, musical or theatre play. The artist triumvirate
Dan Graham, Tony Oursler and Rodney Graham presented their punk puppet
oeuvre Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty, which premiered last year at Art
Basel Miami Beach. The stage work was accompanied by an exhibition at T-B
A21, an art space in Vienna’s inner city, initiated by Francesca von
Habsburg in 2004, which continuously hosts shows put together from the
Thyssen-Bornemisza contemporary art collection.
What do hippies and punks have in common and how can the development of rock
music be traced according to the cornerstones of American history? These
questions have permeated the work of Dan Graham for more than 25 years. One
of Graham’s essential works on this topic is his groundbreaking video, Rock
My Religion (1982–4). For pop-culture theorist Diedrich Diedrichsen, this
video is ‘one of the most important texts on the theory of rock music [yet]
it is neither a text nor is it by a theorist of rock music or the counter
culture. Rather, it is by a visual artist.’ Centring on American history and
the importance of alternative movements, Rock My Religion’s historical
framing starts off with the Shaker movement in the late 18th century and its
representative Ann Lee, whose visions were associated with the second coming
of Christ. In conflict with the dominant political reality at the time of
the founding of the USA, the Shakers formed an alternative group known for
ecstatic dancing during their gatherings. Here bodily impulses derived from
the religious or spiritual quality of their belief, a phenomenon that can
also be found in the nature of ‘hip’ and its musical developments. With its
focus on the individual’s inner visions, the Shakers’ spiritual inclination
stands in close relation to the life of the hippies. The focus on one’s own
sexuality necessitated the demonstration of the innermost bodily feelings,
which only spirituality, and for that matter, music, could bring about. Such
forms of public enactment oppose or deny the dominant political agenda with
its capitalist inclinations, for they are important stimulants that form the
basis of genuinely political counter-movements. Rock ‘n’ roll’s spiritual,
bodily and mind-liberating dimensions influenced many artists of the 1960s
and ’70s, when Punk became the dominant alternative musical influence. Punk
also formed the foundation for the artistic development of Dan and Rodney
Graham.
The hippie counter-culture of the 1960s provides the setting for the punk
puppet show Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty, whose master puppeteer, Philip
Huber, was also responsible for the puppet scenes in Being John Malkovich.
On stage, Tony Oursler’s signature is visible when puppets become animated
in a small niche cut into a white stage wall, across which large video
segments are projected. Next to this rectangular niche, a big box is cut
into the wall, which serves as a stage for the New York punk group Japanther.
Their performance and concert is sung into telephone receivers to distort
the vocals in roaring punk manner. In the play, Neil Sky, a 24-year-old
hippie, is the head of a rock group, whose astrologer chooses the dates for
the band’s concerts. By lowering the voting age to 14, Sky becomes president
of the US and puts everyone over the age of 30 into rehabilitation camps.
However, his excessive LSD consumption soon leads to the passing of his
presidency on to a teenage boy who, in return, is unwilling to trust anyone
in their 20s. The play mixes diffuse content and elements immanent to the
experience of drug consumption, which are reinforced by the heavy punk
tunes. In concert style, the band allows one encore, which sets the audience
and the puppeteers dancing.
In the exhibition at T-B A21, the works of artists dealing with the
performative character of music and puppetry interrelate. As a separate
piece of art, the play’s storyboard has been conceived for conventional
exhibition purposes. Five videos by Tony Oursler are shown on plasma screens
inserted in the wall, alongside 22 drawings and sketches by Dan Graham, Tony
Oursler and set designer Laurent P Berger. Filling an entire wall, the
kaleidoscopic order of drawings and screens echoes the arrangement of niches
cut into the stage set. Parallel to Graham’s puppet universe, the exhibition
presents 45 photographs of Paul McCarthy’s legendary performance and
installation on the occasion of the opening of Hauser & Wirth’s London
gallery space in 2003. The puppet-like character and infantile habits of
political leaders become visible in both Graham and McCarthy’s work, where
political realities and hallucinatory yet putatively visionary elements
combine to create interference patterns. The influence of rock music is
highlighted not only in Graham’s video, but also in a series of video
interviews by Tony Oursler, as he discusses issues of rock, gender and
pop-culture with Kim Gordon, Genesis P-Orridge, Glenn Branca and Graham
himself.
Crucial moments, in the exhibition and the play, transpire when both the
mental and physical territory of the body become activated by rock music.
Surrogate or additive to the effects triggered by drug consumption, music
stimulates the mechanical and often incalculable movements of the body,
which becomes like an externally controlled puppet. Although the capacities
of reason may be blocked, music’s liberating forces are necessary to balance
the harsh reality of our daily experiences.
Walter Seidl is an artist and curator based in Graz