Project Description

TITLE: Update on the Transgression Economy

SHORT DESCRIPTION: An essay on the negative reception of Andrea Fraser’s Untitled (2004). The “failure” of Fraser’s videotaped sexual encounter with an art collector is interpreted in relation to the set of cultural relations I am calling the “transgression economy.”

LONG DESCRIPTION: An essay on the negative reception that greeted Fraser’s controversial Untitled (2004), a videotape of her sexual encounter with a collector who agreed to participate – anonymously – as well as to pay a sum that has been rumored to be nearly $20,000.  Fraser’s intention was, in part, to express the artist’s relation to collectors as a form of prostitution.  Yet critics complained about the banality of the video’s intended metaphor and about the “stiltedness” of the sex.  Above all, they accused Fraser of engaging in actual prostitution. Looking at Fraser’s piece in the historical context of, especially, sex works by women, my essay will ask, what does criticism want? Specifically, what kind of transgression does criticism want? My suspicion is that some critics have misunderstood Fraser’s piece out of nostalgia for the market conditions of the 1970s, and for the set of transgressive artistic strategies of that period. To these critics, the artist’s willing nudity and sexual exhibitionism made Untitled a mere capitulation to the market rather than a critique. My essay will not simply defend Untitled, but will use it to gauge the pressures that continue to guide the production of transgression as an aesthetic value.

WHY WRITE THIS? While transgression has been endlessly discussed as a facet of both modernism and postmodernism, my essay looks instead at generational power dynamics. Most significantly, with the looming retirement of Boomers, the 1960s and ‘70s are currently being revived, along with the celebrated rebelliousness of that generation. As a result, there is more pressure than ever on younger artists to perform transgression on that earlier model, even though, in our intensified commodity culture, transgression itself has been to a large extent commodified. Untitled, which responds to current market conditions in the form of “institutional critique,” should be interpreted in relation to these overarching motives. Fraser’s art strategies are, in part, the result of her membership in the generation working in the Boom’s shadow.

CONTEXTUALIZED IN TERMS OF OTHER WRITING ON THE SUBJECT

In addition to a large number of highly dismissive pieces in The Village Voice, The New York Times Magazine, and other places, Fraser’s Untitled has been more or less positively assessed by art critics Susan Cahan and Isabelle Graw in arts-related journals. However, my major point of reference is an essay by Peggy Phelan on Fraser, Warhol, and Marina Abramovic, “Witnessing Shadows,” in which she writes of the 1970s as “still performance art’s most serious and daring decade.” Phelan, claiming that she is “still partial to art that resists commodity form,” makes a comparison between Untitled and a piece in which Abramovic, nude and often suffering, lives in a gallery for a number of days under the eyes of exhibition visitors.

CONTEXTUALIZED IN TERMS OF MY WRITING

The writing sample I am including in this application is my first published essay on a generational topic. “The Re-Performance of Authenticity,” about Marina Abramovic’s revivals of canonical performance art, is a discussion of the generational dynamics behind the current renewal of interest in ‘60s-style authenticity. I am now writing an article on generations in feminism (with a focus on The V-Girls, with whom I performed), to be published as part of the SOCCAS conference proceedings, Black Sphinx: On the Comedic in Modern Art. The proposed article will be the third article on this subject. My hope is to expand the articles into a book.

This should be of interest to anyone interested in the transformation of value in aesthetics, but also in politics. Because of a lack of space I was unable to mention above my intention to investigate transgression as a feminist strategy. In an interview with the Brooklyn Rail, Fraser said she hasn’t decided if her piece is feminist or not. She also emphasizes the fact that she is a “second-generation feminist,” which points to her perception of generational differences within feminism. My essay should be of interest to anyone curious about the future of feminism, and the relationship between feminist generations.