art that stomps
In university, at the suggestion of a friend, I made several Hypercard comics. They were little clickable stories about my life, with dialogue, sound, and wonderfully grainy MacPaint drawings. (Any suggestions on where to find a working copy of MacPaint?).
My friend Jane made one of the best hypercard stacks I've ever seen, it was called the Bastard Hyperparrot. After entering a few names of friends (or enemies) into the system, it would bring up a picture of a melting, toxic, and snotty parrot with a bad mouth and an even worse attitude who would randomly make up wildly lascivious and hilarious scenarios (using mostly correct grammar) involving the people you suggested, speaking the stories in the even-toned genteel Macintosh voice of Fred. It was so terrible, it was wonderful!
Wednesday night I saw a presentation by artist Michael Shaowanasai (here's an interview in Japanese, couldn't find any info. in English) at DasArts in Amsterdam. He does what so many queer artists do best: reappropriate mainstream culture and knock it on its head. And he does it well, with movies like Iron Pussy or An Eastern Wind, which is a fake documentary about an Asian artist who is successful in America due to the "gentle, polite, and deep" nature of his art. In the film, Michael cleverly interspersed scenes of an Asian boy fellating a fat white man with scenes of a "calm and exotic" Asian artist being flatteringly doted on by New York art critics in black eyeglasses and expensive suits. This is not subtle filmmaking, but it is very entertaining, and full of American style queer-theory-art that was so big in the 1990's.
Both the Bastard HyperParrot and Michael's work are loud art, the kind that says this culture is fucked, and we'll show you just how much! In 2004, maybe more so than ever, it's refreshing to be reminded of that.