Pain and Play
At the end of the first and second year of grad studies here at SFAI, students have an Intermediate Review or a Final Review. As a first year, I had my Intermediate Review and it was splendid. I chose to present my ongoing body of artwork, Society of 23, as it developed chronologically since beginning school in August 2009. My panelists were Richard Berger, Allan deSouza, and Hou Hanru.
Since Allan has worked with me throughout the year, he provided more formal criticism on the physical objects. For Richard and Hanru, it was sort of a giant lump of isolated artwork presented in less than ten minutes. Hanru made an excellent comment, though much anticipated by me, that the various pieces I presented were disjointed—the work was all over the place in the narrative that is the brotherhood. Because of my non-linear mode of production, my artwork went from the oddity of Hazing #1 to a celebration of awesomeness, back to a form of hazing, then back to another form of fun. He wanted to see everything in a kind of developed and focused storyline, which is everything I could wish for, but unfortunately there was no time in the review for such a delivery.
While the panel definitely touched upon ideas I had already developed but did not present, the best request was for ‘the darkness’. This year was a chance for the brotherhood to reveal their play. Now it’s time for pain.
Some questions that could focus this idea of pain are:
What are the brothers protecting?
What are they hiding?
What do they sacrifice / learn / gain / lose during the hazing process?
What do they sacrifice / learn / gain / lose as a brother?
What are the main goals of the brotherhood?
Which way will the Society go? Good or Evil?
A main definition of pain would be “physical or mental suffering or distress”. For me, what is super curious about this idea of Pain and Play is that play has as much distress as pain. At least in my case the past year, it was somewhat painful to play so much. When I presented Beer Pong at the Swell Gallery, the piece became extremely painful, both during its initial planning stages as well as its conclusion. The process of pain and play has become blurred in my artwork, but there is no doubt that I place a lot of painful energy into that play.
I think it’s really cool, that—as I begin to dive into the dark side of the brotherhood to answer those questions above and clarify the entity that is the Society of 23, not only for my audience, but for me as well—I am thinking it would be really playful. One analogy I can make is to the torture and abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib by members of the US Army. Some of those pictures (NSFW, though it’s a Google results page) we’ve seen express the fun that was had when inflicting massive suffering to the prisoners. Another analogy would be the cliché of the horror movie villain smiling and laughing as he kills his victims—think Freddy Krueger (he’s back! ahhh!!) or Jame Gumb.
I’m not going to become a killer or something like that, but the idea of play, defined as “an activity of enjoyment and recreation”, will be just as important to me in developing that pain. It’s clear that I’m serious about partying and recreation—in life and in art—but now, what would it be like to be playful about pain? I think a lot of playful improvisation will arise in this next arena of artistic creation, and in a way, should be really fun! We’ll just have to see…
(The images of me with a bag on my head occurred at a time in my life when I was super sad, humiliated, embarrassed, bla bla bla. After taking several shots, I ended up having a really fun time doing it, and it developed into the series of clown photographs that are, thus far, the darkest illustrations I have for the Society of 23.)
