While I’ll admit that the proliferation of xtranormal’s animation platforms and templates are reaching epidemic proportions, I still find myself shocked at times by the stories these creatures end up tale-ing. In this one, assembled by a dear friend in Seattle, I am arrested not only by the utterly chilling dialogue exchanged between the two critters, but by the fact that I happen to know this story to be true. This version represents the <4-minute take on a specific incident of stunning neglect and apathy, and is a virtuoso condensing of that event, which I discovered in a re-telling that unfolded over the better part of an afternoon.
My own imagined versions of the event are variegated and have since played over and over again in my head, re-running each time via any number of fathomable courses, angles, and aspect ratios. While these private, personal screenings are multiple and repeat, each showing is distinct, offering up a nuance here and an overlooked detail there for chewing and stewing on in quiet contemplation. Despite all this versioning, however, common points are forming around the spaces where these visions are tallied and entered into my ledger book of memories.
Besides a preliminary horror, response to the story, for me anyhow, quickly moves from feeling dumbfounded to feeling a sense of déjà vu. Could we anticipate such a pedestrian and predictable slogan as…Behind every good tragedy, there is a sturdy apathy? Sure. Of course. But this apathy is just but one small piece belonging to a massive constellation of dark matter. Perhaps that call makes a categorical judgment I’ll regret later, but what I am trying to get at is that collectives of people, whether they are members of a co-op or members of society, can be a dangerous assortment, especially when voluntarily generating and accepting a state of constant deferral, which presumes that something will be taken care of by someone sometime in the future somewhere. I am reminded of Marcel Duchamp’s epitaph in Rouen: “D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent” or “Besides, it’s always other people who die.” It takes on a whole new significance for me now.
The possibility and opportunity of the collective, which can be a positive, empowering social formation, can turn very easily into the negligence and apathy of a passive horde, which does not exteriorize its power much like a fire wielding mob might, but internalizes its lack of power by behaving like a timid, bullied schoolboy quivering in a lonely corner, which makes no sense at all since we occupy that corner together as if alone. Well, I suspect that we feel alone in any case. Some of the thoughts I have here went into a piece I did last year called Structure of Relief. I don’t know if it explores these ideas enough, but certainly it attempts to address some of these concerns. It was very directly inspired by a project by Althea Thauberger called Carrall Street, which, among other things, effectively confronted the local arts community with the paralysis of our own positions, especially around issues of gentrification in one of the most highly contested neighborhoods in Vancouver in the lead up to the 2010 Olympic Games. I actually discuss the project in more detail in Joseph del Pesco’s Anecdote Archive.
The animation revives a long standing series of questions I have about the role of autonomy and responsibility in our individual and collective life worlds. I am not sure whatsoever about what those roles should be, and do not want to act as some sort of authority by posing these questions, but it certainly strikes me that when one literally smells the growing stench of putrefying flesh and chooses not to deal with it, then where are we, and where can we go from there?
I don’t know, but I will borrow some words of wisdom from Avalanche magazine’s Spring 1972 issue. It comes from an ad for a Steve Reich project at Galleria Sperone, Torino. It reads:
IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING
ART IS STILL
A REAL MYSTERIOUS COMFORTING
HARD DREAM
I hope so.
Carrall Street. Image courtesy of Althea Thauberger.