I'VE GOT CONCEPTUAL ART IN MY IDENTITY POLITICS.

MEDI(t)Ations: Adrian Piper's Videos, Installations, Performances, and Soundworks 1968-1992

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) at California Plaza 

August 6-November 5, 2000

San Diego, California 

New Museum of Contemporary Art 

New York, New York

October 4, 2001-January 13, 2002

There was once a television commercial for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups that explained the genesis of the product by showing a collision between a jar of peanut butter and a bar of chocolate. The ad acknowledged the individual deliciousness of peanut butter and chocolate while arguing the merits of a union between these "two great tastes." One could make an analogous point concerning art production associated with "conceptualism" and "identity politics." The dry wit and almost puritanical anti-visuality that characterized the linguistic, mathematic, philosophical and phenomenological investigations associated with the conceptual art of the late '60s represents, in part, a grand if futile gesture of protest against the excesses of the decade's art market and the vacuous opticality of high modernist painting and pop art. The wide range of art practices that have become subsumed under the label "identity politics" furthered conceptual art's attack on modernism: feminist art's privileging of women's lived experienc e in the face of the hostility or indifference of the art world of the '70s; the response by gay artists during the '80s to the rapidly escalating health and political crisis of AIDS; the bluntly critical work by artists of color that touched off a critical conflagration in the wake of the 1993 Whitney Biennial.

In sum, "identity politics" is shorthand for art produced after 1970 that foregrounds the connection of racial, class and sexual subjectivity to the institutions and processes of power: when we think of work informed by a politics of identity we typically think of passionate declaration of the personal or scathing socio-political critique. Implicitly or explicitly, "identity art" is informed by the body of the maker or the subject of its investigation. Conceptual art, on the other hand, remains strictly anti-body: its text-based works and deadpan photographs serve as the almost reluctant traces of intellectual engagement. To return to the Reese's analogy, the separate "tastes" of conceptual art and an art informed by a politics of identity have much individual merit, but what do we get when they collide? We get art that is passionately committed to articulating people's lived experience yet spare, even self-effacing, in its appearance.

Since the late '70s, Adrian Piper's art practice has deliberately melded the forms of '60s conceptualism and minimalism with identity based subject matter. An active participant in the New York conceptual art scene of the late '60s, Piper began in 1970 to intervene in the social sphere with "Catalysis," a series of unannounced street performances that tested passersby's responses to a disruptive presence. The anti-social actions of "Catalysis" ranged from Piper riding the bus with a towel stuffed in her mouth to roaming a department store while wearing clothes that reeked of noxious substances. Originally intended by the artist as an "apolitical" sociological investigation, "Catalysis" nonetheless began to nudge Piper into an increasing awareness of her subjectivity in relation to her art. In her 1973-75 series "Mythic Being" she continued to explore the divisive relationship between self and other. By the end of "Mythic Being," Piper began to connect her investigations of alienation to her experience as an A frican American, a minority presence in academia and the art world.

Using a wide range of media, Piper is particularly well-known for minimal video and installation works that engage with issues relating to "race." This term encompasses a wide variety of complex ideas, social and cultural practices, and histories specific to the identity and subjectivity of black (and white) people in a society controlled by a white power structure. As a consequence, Piper's explorations of black identity often involve reactions to white definitions of blackness. Given that the majority of gallery and museum goers are white, Piper structures her messages accordingly. Piper does more than critique racism at the individual and institutional levels: she constructs deliberately didactic works that aggressively seek to alter white viewers' racial prejudices.

Organized by independent curator Dara Meyers-Kingsley, "MEDI(t)Ations: Adrian Piper's Videos, Installations, Performances, and Soundworks 1968-1992" emphasizes the political impetus of Piper's post '70s art practice. While a number of Piper's late '60s through early '70s conceptual audio works were presented at a listening station, Piper's overtly political work dominated the four galleries that comprised the exhibition. The central gallery showcased the video installation "Cornered" (1988) and the video My Calling (Card) #1: A Double Meta-Performance (1987-88). Separate rooms were devoted to the video installation "What's It's Like, What It Is #3" (1991) and the audio installation "Aspects of the Liberal Dilemma" (1978). All these works tackle the subject of racism in different ways. "Cornered" investigates white society's fear of miscegenation and "passing." My Calling (Card) #1 addresses Piper's experience of racism as a woman of color who does not look "black." "What It's Like" is a refutation of racial s tereotypes. "Aspects" investigates the potential racism lurking behind the insistence that art inspire aesthetic rather than social engagement. Given the shared concern of these works, among others in the exhibition, MEDI(t)Ations" seemed less like a retrospective--which typically maps out the trajectory of an artist's development-and more like a presentation of a specific period during an artist's career.

Most of the works on display were produced before race-based political critique became fashionable in the art world. Piper was a trailblazer, with particular importance to '90s artists dealing with issues of racial identity and racism. The exhibition would be stronger if it had emphasized the historical significance of her work. Lacking this context, a number of the works simply appeared dated. This was particularly the case for "Aspects of a Liberal Dilemma," with its almost strident insistence that art transcends disinterested aesthetic pleasure to grapple with social problems. In the wake of the mainstreaming of critical art, it is easy to forget the challenge that Piper's work presented to contemporary art viewers and professionals of the time. For example, one repeated tale concerns a viewer's violent reaction to "Cornered" during which Piper, in the impersonal tones of a newscaster, offered statistics regarding the not insignificant percentage of American whites with African genes. At an opening for thi s work, a man purportedly threw a chair and shouted that no one could force him to be black.

One criticism of much contemporary polemical art is that it can easily allow the viewer to avoid acknowledging his or her own participation in racist, sexist or xenophobic social practices and attitudes. In other words, all those other people are racist--not me. The didactic tone of Piper's '80s video installations attempts to circumvent this problem by leaving the white viewer no possible avenue of escape. "Cornered" systematically works through the possible negative reactions whites may have to blacks who are not of obvious African origin and to the news that they themselves may indeed be black if they adhere to the logic of America's "one drop rule." In "Four Intruders Plus Alarm System" (1980) (an audio installation presented in audio format at MOCA), the viewer hears a monologue spoken by an imaginary white viewer in response to slide projected images of four black men. "Four Intruders" satirizes knee-jerk racist reactions to representations of blacks by speaking directly to them: "I have many black frie nds--my maid is one of my best friends." The blatant bigotry of the monologue presumably dispels any lingering doubts that such responses by whites are acceptable. The heavy-handed didacticism of Piper's video and audio installations has its advantages and disadvantages: it can precipitate a necessary ethical crisis in the viewer, but it also runs the risk of closing down channels of engagement.

A similar but related problem occurs with "What It's Like, What It Is #3." This installation consists of a blinding white, starkly lit room, the center space of which is dominated by a large rectangular column. A video monitor is embedded near the top of each side of the column: as one circles around the column one gazes up to view the same images on each monitor. While assuming mug shot poses, a black man makes a series of statements concerning what black people are not: "I am not pushy. I am not sneaky. I am not noisy," etc. As crucial as it is to combat racist stereotypes, I could not help but recall Homi K. Bhabha's critique of the 1995 Whitney exhibition, "Black Male," which examined stereotypes of black masculinity. Bhabha argued that despite the exhibition's critical stance and the necessity of its "deconstructive project," the constant repetition of stereotypical images and ideas about black men infected the show with the stereotype's particular brand of malaise. The stereotype by definition is a reduction: to restage it in order to deconstruct it puts one at risk of becoming "mired" in it. [1]

"What It's Like" negates limiting definitions of racial identity. It enacts negation and in the process is threatened by the processes of mis/representation it seeks to dismantle. This is a necessary risk, and overall, "What It's Like" is formally one of Piper's most powerful installations. Using the self-effacing formal devices associated with conceptualism and minimalism, Piper interrogates the subjective effacement of the racial stereotype. We see a black man speaking but we do not know who he "is": he only describes what he is not. He is both presence and absence; idea and concrete reality. The overpowering white space of the gallery becomes a metaphor for whiteness, in all its unstated/understated authority. Through her art, Piper brings together conceptualism, minimalism and the politics of identity in a forceful collision that results in a passionate spareness.

WEENA PERRY is a freelance writer and lecturer in the Department of Cinema and Photography at Ithaca College.

NOTES

(1.) Homi K. Bhabha, "Focus: Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art," in Artforum 33 (February 1995), p.110.