In my Material Intelligence Class, we just read Lawrence Weschler’s Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. The nonfiction book describes the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT), a self-styled museum in Los Angeles created by David Wilson. The MJT stands at a crossroads of 17th century curiosity cabinets (wunderkammern) and modern museums.
The MJT contains odd examples of the natural world, such as the symbiotic relationship of a Stink ant, megolaponera foetens, and the fungus that infects its brain to reproduce. The museum also hosts exhibits of bizarre history, such as the intertwined stories of Geoffrey Sonnabend, a psychologist of memory who formulated elaborate theories of forgetting, and Madelena Delani, a classically-trained opera singer who had no short-term memory and could not read sheet music.
I just keep thinking about the connections one could draw between David Wilson's cabinet of curiosities and the idea of "queerness" through the lens of postmodernism.
Wilson has amassed an assorted collection of oddities and freaks of nature and presented them in a format for the world to view as factual information. He is enchanting us with wonder to follow him into the unknown to question the known.
Queer , while originally a synonym of odd or weird, has been co-opted as a catch-all term for gender/sexuality/identity non-conforming persons. Queer extends beyond identity, though, and includes
queer theory. To "queer" something is to take a common object/phrase/action of heteronormative culture out of its context, and give it new meaning. The reclamation of the word "queer" is a great example of how language is often queered: the term was used as a adjective similar to "odd" until the mid-twentieth century, when the term began to be applied as a slur against homosexual and gender non-conforming persons. During the 1990s, certain groups of gay, lesbian and transgender persons purposefully reclaimed the word from the heterosexual slang lexicon and adopted it to describe their entire community of persons not aligned with heteronormative values. These people successfully took the sting out of the slur and added pride and substance to it.
In many ways, queer is both known and unknown. We can categorize people, objects and ideas as queer, but queer easily defies categorization and reductions of itself. Queer is an ever-evolving concept. In a similar vein, Mr. Wilson's MJT appropriates the norm to manipulate it for his own wonder. Even with the help of subtle contextual footnotes, we cannot know what is real and what is unreal. Wilson, I believe, revels in this non-specific (queer) space.
5 comments:
Aaron,
This is an absolutely fascinating way to look at the MJT—but I see it as looking at postmodernism through the lens of queerness. Re-contextualizing has been such an effective strategy in art. Rare, surprising objects have always been associated with cabinets of curiosity. Does that mean that all cabinets of curiosity are queer? If not what might be collected in a queer cabinet? Does familiarity undermine this concept? You raise many interesting questions here!
I definitely agree with your assessment of the MJT as a queer institution. I appreciate how everything can be seen or assessed in relation to a theory, but ultimately we must choose multiple lenses to fully understand the implications of the MJT. Without this post my understanding of the MJT's position in relation to the culture that produced it wold be incomplete, thank you. Keep going though. You have made a connection, but what does it mean? What is its importance? What greater understanding to we gain from viewing the MJT through queer theory?
More, more, more!
-Gabriel
hey sorry i wasn't able to make it on friday but i stopped by earlier today. Great work- we should get together to discuss work- i've done a couple series on text sourced pieces and would love to discuss your viewpoints.
aaron- the candlelights are from a larger series of pieces with them as primary medium. the lights functioned as a substitute for the penis and in a broader sense maleness. A lot of my work- elemental constructs take on symbolistic elemental meaning within the context of the entire piece. Take it another step and the intermingling of these candlesticks are representative of the gay male population. symbolism for the individual gay man in context of a larger community is a concern in a general overview of this body of work. the idea of shared plugging, the 'limited mortality' of illumination, and the common circuit under which we all share that electricity or life. Your assessment on aids would be a correct viewpoint as it is a necessary inclusion to the gay conscious. and it often appears as a theme on the peripherals of abstraction in my research on 'gay' (an americanized definitive as opposed to the more open and european 'queer'). the vigil comment is a wise observation. i attended catholic school for 13 years and come from a devout family. Speaking in the broadest sense on my work- it all deals with influences informed from my upbringing in this dynamic- objects of 'fetishization'or curiosity and the dialogues they enter into as they form relationships, altars and environmental study, and performative acts of ritual or process. haha and it's always me playing in my studio.
sometimes dancing.
i hope that articulates. coffee. yes.
aaron- the candlelights are from a larger series of pieces with them as primary medium. the lights functioned as a substitute for the penis and in a broader sense maleness. A lot of my work- elemental constructs take on symbolistic elemental meaning within the context of the entire piece. Take it another step and the intermingling of these candlesticks are representative of the gay male population. symbolism for the individual gay man in context of a larger community is a concern in a general overview of this body of work. the idea of shared plugging, the 'limited mortality' of illumination, and the common circuit under which we all share that electricity or life. Your assessment on aids would be a correct viewpoint as it is a necessary inclusion to the gay conscious. and it often appears as a theme on the peripherals of abstraction in my research on 'gay' (an americanized definitive as opposed to the more open and european 'queer'). the vigil comment is a wise observation. i attended catholic school for 13 years and come from a devout family. Speaking in the broadest sense on my work- it all deals with influences informed from my upbringing in this dynamic- objects of 'fetishization'or curiosity and the dialogues they enter into as they form relationships, altars and environmental study, and performative acts of ritual or process. haha and it's always me playing in my studio.
sometimes dancing.
i hope that articulates. coffee. yes.
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