I went to Southie last Sunday morning with a friend because we had another friend in common who was showing some photographs at the King Terminal Studios.  Nine to be exact. 

To be totally truthful, I think I'm just about ahtted out, so it's probably a good thing open studio season is drawing to a close.  What was interesting today was to see the ways Southie's artist studio culture is a little different from some of the other neighborhoods'. 

Particularly at The Distillery, there seemed to be a lot more of what I would call "conceptual art," although the artists themselves probably have some other fancy-shmancy way of referring to it.  There were several video installations without which items on display made little sense, and with which they very often made even less.  But whatever.  It's open studios, right?  You get what you get. 

It was the second floor (if I'm not mistaken) of the Distillery that reminded me of something from the movie Saw.  It was just cram-packed with art that dwelt on the creepiest aspects of corporeality, but the artists seems to be trying so hard to shock you almost felt sorry for them and tried acting all shocked just to give them a little boost.  But then you thought better of it, because you don't want to encourage them.  I mean, when art-as-provocation/provocation-as-art is the norm, and shock's the status quo, where can you go?  That's the wannabe shock-artist's quandary, innit?  (Hey, I've got an idea!  Make something...pretty.  That would be really shocking!) 

Unless you've been snoozing for the last couple of decades, you can't have missed that porn, scat, and gore—sounds like a law-firm, dunnit?—have become major preoccupations of a certain strain of Twentieth Century art.  Not just the corporeal, which has been an obsession of artists since the beginnings of art, but an obsession with the violent, the vulgar, and the vile bordering on hatred of the body.  The trend itself is unfortunately more interesting in its way than most of the so-called art it's produced.

The body is a riveting subject.  Period.  It is compelling art in and of itself.  That's one reason we're so insistently, hopelessly obsessed with sports and porn in the first place (that's not just the Royal We, either).  From the ideal, which preoccupied the Greeks, say, to the disturbingly distorted (Francis Bacon), the outright grotesque (Lucien Freud), lewd (the Chapman Brothers) and lurid (Joel-Peter Witkin)—and this is the shortest of short-lists—rest assured it's been done. Our physical selves present us with endless art-fodder.  So there's nothing new about art that deals with even the most disturbing aspects of being bodies—or being minds traumatized by being bodies.

In my ample-enough experience of conceptual artists I've found the one trait they share is their consistent underestimation of the intelligence of their audience.  True, anyone who would willingly subject themselves to their art you can automatically deduct about 25 points from their IQ, but even then, seems they're never as stupid as the artist would like. 

There was at least one such wannabe-shock-artist at the Distillery whose work was highly conceptual and body-obsessed.  His "installation" consisted of several featureless child-sized beanbag-like human forms strewn in a corner of his living/working space.  There were also several crudely constructed body parts hanging from a clothes rod, including a single pectoralis major, for lack of a less clinical way to label it, complete with an oversized nipple; a huge anal sphincter; and, the pièce de résistance: a foot-long flaccid dong.  Shock, horror.  (If I had a dime for every one of those I've seen *yawn*).

This collection of nonesuch strewn about the room willy-nilly made no especial sense, and I would not have given any of it another thought, but my friend had to make a crack to the artist, who asked if we wanted to see the video of the performance piece in which he used the props.  We felt we could not refuse.  Out of politeness.  Which is totally wasted on performance artists, as everyone knows.

As evidenced by the fact that as the video played the artist stood two feet away openly scrutinizing us for any reaction to it. 

The video itself featured the artist in a black body sock.  In it he looked just like a life-size version of one of his beanbag people, who were strewn about the stage in the performance much as they were in the studio.  His face was covered by the sock and he felt around blindly, moaning, huffing, and sighing in an extremely agitated manner.   

He seemed to be in search of body parts to attach to his featureless form.  And he was apparently not against making a spectacle of himself in the process.  He discovered by feeling around on the beanbag people and feeling himself up, that he was missing his nipples, which seemed to trouble him a good deal, as one might imagine. Luckily there was a spare one sitting around, and an audience member was kind enough to strap it on to him, although he did not ask politely.  I would have made him.  I'd've been, like, "You want the nipple?  Don't be gruntin' and gesticulatin' at me, freak!  I'm not your wet nurse.  What's the magic word?" I mean, just because you're some hot-shit performance artist with a degree from Mass Art, doesn't mean you can rude-out on your audience.

But having gotten some positive reinforcement from the compliant audience member, he repeated his frankly appalling behavior with the prosthetic anal sphincter and the super-dong.  Then he had a member of the audience rip the sock at the seam, and his face popped out of the sock.  That took a lot of nerve.  To show your face after that performance. 

So then he looked around at the audience accusingly and walked off stage.  THE END.

Stimulating stuff.

The artist switched off the TV and was all up in my face.  I turned to my friend.  "So what did you think?" I asked him.  He said, "mmm," and ran from the room.

Then I turned back to the artist, who was still all up in my face.  He was like, "What did you think?"

"Do the words 'IT SUCKED' mean anything to you?" 

I could tell he thought I didn't get it.

I was like, "yeah I got it, bitch.  Let me give you a little tip.  You want to get laid?  Then add some music—something kinda catchy.  Maybe "Putting it Together" from Sunday in the Park with George.  And when you pop out of that sock, pop out as, like, Liza or Cher or someone, and then do a real show-stopper—may I suggest "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" from Annie?—and maybe add a bitchy monologue.  Take it to P-Town.  You'd be a big hit, especially with that dong—Jay-sus!  You a shower or a grower?" 

Then I freakin hightailed it out of there.

Caught up with my friend in a studio across the hall, belonging to a female artist whose entire oeuvre consisted of paintings she'd made by slathering her tits in finger paint and pressing them onto vellum.  I hope she was at least drunk when she did it. 

Then, looking for the exit, we stumbled into another artist's lair.  This one had a bit of talent, but that's only part of the equation, innit?  Poor sod had no material.  He basically made dust-bunny sculptures—out of hair and dirt and dust—of little tiny people whose little hairball bodies were contorted in pain. 

It was like stumbling into a seventh-grade D&D addict's bedroom, and looking under his bed, or something.  I fully expected to find a glass menagerie of the pewter figurines that had obviously inspired the artist somewhere in the room.  

That studio's when I finally said "enough."  Enough freakin aht.  I'm all ahtted out.