All of Berlin was wrapped up in the house of Douglas Crimp last
week for three glorious days of congress, fellowship, laughter and gossip.For
those of you not familiar with the writings of Mr. Crimp run to your local
bookseller and purchase these titles:
AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism
, On the Museum's Ruins, Melancholia and Moralism - Essays on AIDS
and Queer Politics, "Our
Kind of Movie": The Films of Andy Warhol. Looking back at my notes there is so much to
lesbian process, that I’m finding it difficult to encapsulate all that took
place. The festivities began on Thursday
August 28th at the famed commercial art gallerie Buchholz in
Charlottenberg off of the KU-Damm. The
charming gallerists Daniel Buchholz and his lifetime companion Christopher
Mueller were gracious and engaging hosts, and very sweet unlike most art world
movers&shakers. I first met
Buchholz&Mueller in the 1990s at my
Sunday Afternoon Silverlake artist space Sucker at the Garage through Stuart
Comer who is now a curatorial chief at MoMa.
The exhibition at Buchholz Galerie- Pictures, Before and After in salute
to Douglas Crimp features a dazzling array of artists as varied as Charles
James, Agnes Martin, Fierce Pussy and The Cockettes. The opening was a mob scene. I hardly ever go to art openings unless its
one of my former students or a very close dear friend. Hell, I don’t even go to
my own openings. I loved that this event
was very cross generational, with a nice amount of radiant youth from different
Berlin scenes that usually don’t mix plus gleaming eye candy in the form of some
strapping young lads. The hottest boy in
the room was decidedly Goldenen Peter the patrician Buchholz exhibitions coordinator
who recently moved to Berlin from New York City. Peter is stunning,an immaculate child of WASP
wealth with a flawless complexion,brilliantine smile, taunt torso and a bubble
butt you could build a dream on.
Gallery openings are not really
for looking at the art its all about being social so I plan on going back
during the run which lasts till Oct 30th. In Germany one thing I can’t stand at art
galas is when they go into high speech mode, which tends to labour on and on ad
nausea. The exhibition & symposium
organizers Juliane Rebentisch, Diedrich Diederichsen and CHEAP’s Marcuse
Siegelstein wisely kept things to the verbosic bare minimum. The man of the
hour: Douglas Crimp, who is the very
embodiment of grace, intelligence and elegance was radiant and looking like a
Denton Welchian teen idol. Its very
difficult to believe that Douglas Crimp just turned 70.
The gallery was packed with
celebutants including Wolfgang Tilmans, Susanne Sachsse, Michaela Wunsch
looking like a sunkissed California girl on her return to Berlina from teaching
in Los Angeles, the incredible German artist Isa Genzken(fresh from a
spectacular retrospectacle at MOMA earlier this year) gorgeous Iranian artist
Nairy Baghramian in a white latex blouse, (Ms. Baghramian was in the 2001 CHEAP
production of Life of Juanita Castro at Podevil), Henrik Olesen, Discoteca
Flaming Star, Katya Sander, Gesine Danckwart with little baby, Maria Losier,
Lucile Desamory with fetching gal pal Pauline, LA’s Christopher Williams with
hot powertop curator wife Ann Goldstein(Formerly of MOCA-LA and Stedelik
Museum) Philip Smith, delightful glass blower Josiah McElheny(who flew in from
NYC) Thomas Locher with curator partner Rike Frank, dandy dust artist Kerstin
Honeit, Frank Wagner, film professor Gertrud Koch with media studkin professor
Astrid Deuber Mankowsky, critic/gallerist Dominic Eichler, bbooks French New
Wave scholar Nico Siepen, Stephan Geene of the amazing film Umsonst, cute
Polish Phd Art Historian Magda Szczeniak,Symposium guest speakers: Juan Suarez,
Dirck Linck, Rosalyn Deutsche, Jonathan Flatly, Rachel Haidu, writer Manfred
Hermes, Matthias Haase, Koen Claerhout,humpy Indian actor Manish Dayal of the
new Helen Mirren film,casting director Constantine Achmed Berger, Arsenal
Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Richard&Salome Gersch, Tobias Rauscher
Ashaf and Saskia Wendland. The delicious artist dinner was at the cozy boite
Manzini close to the gallery at Ludwigkirsch Strasse 11 and featured a
specially designed serviette by Louise Lawler.
On Friday at Arsenal Institut
fur film und Videokunst was the first day of the Douglas Crimp Symposium
honouring his work in the academy, as curator and activist taking his
forthcoming 2015 memoires as a departure point for a reconsideration of
artistic, theoretical and queer subcultural practices from the 1960s to the
present. Things got off on a rousing note with a mini lecturina by Marc Siegel
who expertly applies the principles of Catskills-Borcht Belt humour to his
scholarship. My pen ran out of ink
during Diedrich Diedereichsen’s presentation so I wasn’t able to take any
notes, but I can attest that the famous DD was in fine form. The
incandescent Juliana Rebentisch of the
lovely voice and perfect diction (whose
2012 tome The Aesthetics of Installation Art is a must read) proved in her talk
why the Gospel According to Saint Rebentisch is the be all and end all.
The divine Rosalyn Deutsch of
Barnard College in New York who has been a dear friend to Douglas Crimp for
almost 40 years and her Museum of Innocence lecture which was very timely as
she gave a nice overview of the narrative of loss from before the World Trade
Center and its displacement of the Little Syria Community, small business
destruction and the moving of the Washington Market and the fetishism inherent
in turning the shards of the WTC into a victim and the inherent evil of
developers that create new buildings with a separate entrance for the poor and
misbegotten.
The Arsenal was SRO like it is
during the Berlinale Film Festival and Forum & Forum Expanded screenings so
by the time Douglas Crimp read the Hotel des Artistes chapter from his memoir
it was pure pandemonium as everyone in the auditorium was riveted to his
transporting prose. My ear prickled when
he mentioned Zoli’s Model Management Agency as both Glen Meadmore and I were
briefly signed to them. Zoli was the
modelling agency with all the freaks in the early 1980s when I was on the scene
in New York. The hot gossip that had
everyones jaws flapping was the revelation that famed artist Ellsworth Kelly
was a shrimp enthusiast. Friday evening
closed with a screening of the wonderful 1972 Yvonne Rainer film Lives of
Performers which I had never seen but somehow I channelled in my 1994 short
subject VooDoo Williamson-The Dona of Dance.
At the Arsenal was a myriad of curators and
students from around the known and unknown world,including visiting scholars
Tobias Nagl(author of the important book on race and Weimar Cinema) Sianne Ngai
with life partner literary critic Mark
McGurl, Penny Deutscher, Virve Sutinen, Andrea Niederbuchner from Tanz in
August, Antonia Baehr,Renate Lorenz, Karin Michaelski, Pauline Boudry, sexyline
junior queer film scholar Chris Tedjasukmana, Sissy Magazine writer Andre
Wendler,Turkish artist Aykan Safoglu, queer curator Todd Sekuler, art critic
Tom Holert and legend Noll Brinkmann.
The last day of the symposium
on Saturday the tone seemed to shift and everything was like speed dating where
on Friday things were very languid.
Douglas Crimps colleague at the University of Rochester the lovely
Rachel Haidu and her Lives of Complications was the perfect way to begin the
day answering the questions raised by the Yvonne Rainer film. Stanley Kubrick certainly can’t hold a candle
to Ms. Rainer and Ms. Haidu made that evident.
I kept wondering during the lecture what ever happened to Fernando the
Chillean beauty with the strong nose, incredible bone structure and lithe lean
musculature. He was so my type accept
for having his hair in an unsightly ponytail.
The other young dark haired semetic beauty boy in the piece also looked
delectable in the recreation scenes of Frank Wedekind’s LuLu where in his
newsboy cap he was the perfect Alwa.
The next talk by activist Dirck
Linck on the Bricolage Camp Genius in Irving Rosenthal’s literary cult classic
Sheeper got everyone in the place wanting to find a copy of this bejewelled
tome. Sheeper is definitely the book
with a bulge ---a queer masterwork. Mr.
Rosenthal was a colleague of Jack Smith and was part of the Beat Generation of
writers Ginsberg and Borroughs. Having
the fantastiche Herr Linck in the symposium helped lift it from being a pure
New York Fest, which is in keeping with the history that Douglas Crimp has in
Berlin since the early 1980s.
The last two talks Jonathan
Flatley’s Just Alike and Juan Suarez’, Grids,Folds and Disco were the perfect
way to end the proceedings on a lively note.
Jonathan and his lovesexy boyish enthusiasm is so compelling in bringing
to light the cross racial imitations and layers of repetition for emphasis in
Warhol’s bla-tino drag queen poloroid portrait series. Anytime someone evokes queer foremothers
Marcia P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera they are aces high with me. The handsome and stately Spaniard Juan Suarez
who also wowed at Camp/Anti-Camp back in 2012 really knows how to connect the
gridlike and disco mirror ball dots.
From Lesbian zen to Larry Lavan and the Paradise Garage boogie intimacy
El Suarez took it from coon to caint in the dynamic of continuity and
dislocation. Can’t wait till next year
with Douglas’ 71st .