LADI ROGEURS: SIR LOUDRAGE – a still life
by Loris Gréaud at Galerie Max Hetzler
Listen to the sound frequencies of dying stars while walking under copper leaves.
I visited an Arcadian meadow where deeply rooted strawberries were growing on golden vines and symbolized love. I was drinking a Campari and apparently strawberries didn’t go with the drink. I was a tourist, the delights conjured from my imagination. I was told I could only be offered far-removed pickles, this wasn’t Spreewald. But the pickles were not ordinary pickles, once held in your hands, you were banished from Arcadia and told to leave. But before I left, I plucked a flower to remember the smell of the strawberry meadows.
On the dance floor of “What difference does it make!” I met someone whose take on common interests were so different from mine, it made all the difference.
How two people from the humanities can amazingly miss the connect:
Concerning Hegel:
Me: I took a class on his Phenomenology.
Literature: I took a class on his Logic.
(the phenomenology / logic divide)
Me: Did you know Hegel’s writing desk is in the main Humboldt university building?
Literature: You mean the building next to a sculpture of his bust?
Me: What sculpture?
(the desk / sculpture divide)
Concerning French Philosophy/ Literature
Literature: I started a Lacan reading group.
Me: I only vaguely remember Foucault. I’m into French literature.
(his literature was German and philosophy French, my literature was French and philosophy German)
Concerning Art
Literature: What do you like doing?
Me: I like going to galleries for contemporary art.
Literature: Did you see the Mondrian exhibit at the Martin-Gropius-Bau?
Me (thinking): shit I missed a Mondrian exhibition… there is a gap is my information flow
Literature: I guess Mondrian is modern and not contemporary
Me (still thinking): I can’t believe I missed that
(the modern/ contemporary art divide)
Concerning German Romanticism
Me: I like German Romanticism.
Literature: Brentano?
Me: Brentano is the one Romantic I haven’t read.
Literature: His style is similar to Tristram Shandy…
Me (thinking): I tried to read that once and couldn’t stand the writing…
(the Brentano/ all the other Romantics divide)
Concerning the Application of Trust
Literature: I translated an academic paper on “trust” today.
Me: I used to sell “trust” to e-commerce retailers.
Literature: How do you sell trust?
Me: with a feedback management system… customer and product reviews
(the translation/ selling of trust divide)
Concerning Quentin Tarantino
Literature: The only Tarantino film I thought was good was Reservoir Dogs.
Me (thinking): That is the one film I am not interested in seeing I haven’t seen that one.
(the Reservoir Dogs/ all other Tarantino films divide)
Concerning Politics
Me: Do you know Nate Silver?
Literature: Never heard of him.
Me: All my information on politics comes from Nate Silver.
(the political information divide)
Lit in the hues of a dandy’s uterus, we have two male service workers regimented like androids. In their dance of maintenance and service, the missing parts of the female body are either man-made or artificial. What is real and in the flesh are the two male bodies. The sculptural piece in the shape of a vaginal opening and the long strands of a ponytail acting as both whip and ornament are present but not relevant.
Beyond the body, this beautifully futuristic piece by Adam Linder and Shahryar Nashatyou further dissects the components of eroticism and labor and then substitutes and categorizes the obvious parts for the underrepresented. Service work is elevated and the face often times dismissed as secondary to the sexual act is now the pornographic visual. At times contortionist in bodily movement, ‘hair care’ hits and brushes against the marble with gentle lovingness. The two choreographic service workers, Adam Linder and Andrew Hardwidge, lithely perform their maintenance labor with hair prosthetics attached to white gloves or leather head straps. As a reinterpretation of Ravel’s Boléro plays during the intermissions, one waits until the dancers come back and the video flashes sexually suggestive close-ups of functionally forgotten parts of the human face such as the tear ducts, earlobes or nostrils.
