¡Clac!

A performative installation by Linda Parnell, Humberto Howard, and Susan Joseph at PØST 1904 E 7^th Place, LA, CA 90021. July 30, 2011 7-10 pm.

Presented for a mere three hours on July 30, the work in this show, despite its sculptural heritage and references, was as ephemeral and transient as the duration of the exhibition. Repeatedly iterating a kind of glitchy visuality, the various oscilloscopic projections, electronic music boxes, and dissected speakers provided a staccato visual rhythm that mixed-up the trippy flow of sound emanating from either the floor-bound speakers or the music boxes that Humberto and Susan plucked during the two performances. While there was a kind of transient, sensitive beauty to each physical object, crammed into the small but accommodating space at Pøst, the manner in which the objects elbowed for territory, slapped by the projected flickerings, was awkward in a way that disrupted expectations in a productive and perplexing manner. Calmed by the synchronized electronic chatter of Humberto’s and Susan’s joint performance (framed by the name “ANIGHTINJULY”), the sculptural elements simmered in their own mob-status grumbling but steady, interrupted but not ignored. What occurs in this temporary dynamic is a reterritorialization of object-space, of framing, and of public/private murmuring that uncomfortably, purposefully, unexpectedly and beautifully transformed the notion of exhibition.

Interested in sidling up to a collaborative practice without becoming consumed in a univocal community, the three artists presenting here seem to shyly rub shoulders, intersecting joint interests but murmuring individually from behind their glasses and under their hat brims. Without assuming too much about the meaning of collaboration as an ongoing art practice, these three touch on a kind of desirable and flexible sociality that is expressed by Félix Guattari in his book The Three Ecologies: they flatten out territories of “self” and create space for the inarticulate, the strange and unwieldy: it’s the glitch that matters, despite the fetishistic beauty of the carefully crafted object; it’s the inarticulate mumbling that unfolds as a creative force allowing for something perplexing to appear and astound. For a moment, a very short (perhaps too short) moment, the general equivalence of market-driven art production, celebrated individualism, and same-old notions of “good” are confounded and reconfigured into something with a generative force of its own, a force that continues long after the last screech fades into the siren-laden atmosphere of downtown Los Angeles.