Word: chan
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...program itself is fantastic. Helen Molesworth, HUAM’s curator of contemporary art, organized the series to be the lecture equivalent of that underground music club that you trust to get awesome acts, regardless of whether you’ve ever heard of them. Chan definitely set a great vibe—he’s young, he’s hip, he’s the apotheosis...
...Chan is of the post-post-modern breed of iconoclasts. Whereas the original version wanted the utter annihilation of authority, Chan and his tribe just want to spin it around until it falls on its ass. The Vietnam generation has aged out of vogue, and it turns out that anarchy is unpleasant. Chaos, however...
...During the talk at Harvard, Chan got flowery and philosophical when talking about his artistic process, the way his work plays with silence and absence, how he tries to create a space for “articulate speechlessness” and “dumbfoundedness” (he balked at one point when Molesworth accused him of sounding “churchy”)—and then denied any unique insight into what it all means. I quote, “Your guess is as good as mine...
...there is a Church of What’s Happening Now, Paul Chan and Tina Fey can be its anti-priests. At the start of every mass they’ll stand up, give a “hey,” and then open the floor for sardonic stories and masturbation jokes. Perhaps they’ll have prepared a video presentation, in which a family of young hermaphrodites skips around an Elysian paradise shouting “cat anus” and winking at the camera. Laughter will abound. Everyone over 40 will feel uncomfortable...
...It’s no coincidence that Chan and Fey both work in video. Culture curmudgeon Theodor Adorno wrote that the consequences of television “will be quite enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment of aesthetic matter so drastically, that by tomorrow the thinly veiled identity of all industrial culture products can come triumphantly out into the open.” Yup, that sounds about right, except it’s Chan and Fey’s triumph, not the industry’s. And industry is still trying to figure out what happened...