ELUSIVE QUALITY
Film programme curated by Lauren Cornell and Astria Suparak.
In its Report, the 9/11 Commission points to four kinds of failure
- 'imagination, policy, capabilities and management' - as causes
for the government¹s inept handling of terrorist threats to
the U.S. and the drastic oversights that lead to the events of September
11, 2001. This, coming from a nation so excessively confident of
its socio-economic edge and sovereign destiny, marks a moment in
which American myths are being forcibly dispelled, not just for
those on the Left (who knew it all along, right) but across the
political spectrum in the U.S.
At the same time, American pop culture persists in its optimism
and its upward and outward (global) mobility. The media landscape
assumes a pretense of responsibility and inclusion. However, this
pose of post-liberated glory is just a fresh set of injustices coated
with spin. Programs such as Reality TV and Fox News present illusions
of difference, information and participation while, in actuality,
these democratic principles are increasingly threatened. If one
wonders why the cultural and political happenings of the Œ60s
so haunt the present, it could be because this was an earlier moment
of widespread dissent and questioning in the U.S., whose goals and
legacies have yet to be fulfilled. In response to this dubious state
of progress, some artists have taken to visualizing what is so aggressively
covered up, namely the acute realities of economic, cultural and
everyday failure.
'Elusive Quality', the video program curated by Astria Suparak
and myself, affirms the position of failure in relation to American-bred
fantasies of athletic, sexual and political mastery. The works included,
a few of which are discussed below, are formally and conceptually
diverse. Some originated as site-specific performances not necessarily
meant for single screen exhibition. In the program however, they
are all linked temporarily through their shared consideration of
how an embrace of failure can re-imagine the terms for success.
In a political climate where the buck is consistently passed, these
works, and all those included in 'Elusive Quality', demonstrate
how failure can be an engine for creative thought and a catalyst
for personal reflection and social action. Each work is imbued with
a sense of hope and urgency that accompanies such processes of realization
and reclamation.
Lauren Cornell, August 2004
Elusive Quality first screened at Participant, Inc in New York,
in conjunction with the release of 'Practice More Failure', the
third edition of feminist journal LTTR.
Thanks to Astria Suparak
for her collaboration, and support of this essay, and to Michael
Connor.
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