Tracy and the Plastics, and the responsibility of the Artist

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I have a feeling that at least two people on ILM will be able to weigh in on this, but my question is more broadly related to modern art anyway, so familiarity with this particular act isn’t even that necessary…

For context, Tracy and the Plastics are (is?) a one-woman band from New York. Her name is Wynne Greenwood, and she’s made her name by combining experimental videos with politically charged electro-pop.

She’s a self proclaimed feminist, lesbian, and performance artist.

She prerecords all the music, and in performance she simply karaokes over it and talks to the audience. Her movies are projected onto a screen behind her, and all the action is meant to correlate with her set. There’s three characters that appear as a sort of narrative throughout the performance, all of them played by Wynne herself, who interact with each other and the real-life Wynne onstage. It’s very weird… she talks to them, and they talk amongst themselves, and there’s all sorts of tricks with space and position. Mostly it’s just a collage of tv commercials, cardboard cutouts and fast editing.

The whole idea, as far as I understand it, is that she’s exploring the boundaries between performer and audience, figuring out and REDEFINING the relationship and challenging our notions and bla bla bla she’s a grad student at Bard (this is what happens I guess when smart people try to make music).

I talked to her on the phone for almost an hour the other day, interviewing her for an article, and in the midst of it an interesting question arose when she confessed to me (unfortunately I don’t think she realized that her statement should be viewed as a confession, rather than a mission statement) that she didn't really have any specific message in her videos, that she just kind of made them and hoped that they contributed "somehow" to the overall musical/visual
experience. She also said that because art critics have been looking at her work recently, she has had to reevaluate the things she wants to communicate to her audience.

Basically, my question is: what responsibility does an artist have to his or her audience? Does Wynne have to know what she's doing for her art to be effective? How concrete does her goal have to be for her work to have value? Where do you draw the line between meaninglessness and resolute, lazy ambiguity? Like I said, this applies to most of the effortless (the bad kind of effortless) modern art you see in amateur galleries, but it isn’t often that you run into someone as honest about her confusion. What’d you think? Does an artist have to know HOW his/her art works; does he even really have to have goals? I reckon goals are for politics and the main thing for art is sincerity. But shit like this still feels lazy to me, and I’m not sure if that’s just my fault or what.

Apologies for the long post, hella stylings

― Leon Neyfakh (Leon Neyfakh), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 04:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it's entirely appropriate for an artist to not assign meaning to her work. The viewer/audience can derive meaning if it's there.

Obviously it means something to someone, or you wouldn't be writing an article about it.

― Debito (Debito), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 04:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I was at a show where she played once, but we went to Steak'n'Shake during her performance. I always regreted that. I think if you're going to pretend you mean something you ought to mean something. There are exceptions. But if you're going to be guilty about pretending you ought to mean it!

― Sonny A. (Keiko), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 04:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Steak'n'Shake is pretty great, no reason to regret it.

They're true Americans over there, you know they mean their shit

― Leon Neyfakh (Leon Neyfakh), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 04:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't think "accidental" art like that is any less valid, I just don't find it as interesting.

Besides, randomness is soooo 1903.

― Famous Athlete, Tuesday, 9 December 2003 04:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, what's the alternative to having no message? "Exploring the boundaries between performer and audience"? Right, because THAT hasn't been tried. I'll take a little meaningless media collage any day over that, thanks.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 04:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I'll take Laurie Anderson, please. Better tunes, and a lot funnier.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 05:40 (twenty-one years ago)

If Wynne hadn't said she was a performance artist, wouldn't her act just be a pretty cool looking show and she'd have avoided these worries?

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 05:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess so, but if her art can so easily be changed in our minds to a mere "pretty cool looking show," how seriously can we take her artistic initiative? To clarify, I don't want to minimize the worth of a cool looking show- but I can only imagine her reaction if you were to MARGINALIZE HER WORK like that...

― Leon Neyfakh (Leon Neyfakh), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 05:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Well she's the one worried her performance doesn't have the substance to stand up to art criticism, PLUS cool looking show beats "art", easy.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 05:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Agreed! However I don't think you can ignore her intentions all together. If you ask me context is half of everything, art or not.

Ironically, if baby girl just stopped worrying about it and did as you suggested, the result would probably be more substantial, and even more artistic than her current output...

― Leon Neyfakh (Leon Neyfakh), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 05:53 (twenty-one years ago)

i saw her on a great triple bill with chicks on speed and peaches. it's not like the chicks have "a message" either - instead, they are human beings with sociopolitical views - political views about concrete things [eg ridiculing certain heads of state who they disagree with] and more freeform issues [they engage the fashion and music world in ways that some find interesting, others find banal].

and peaches - i would say, interestingly, she seems more about the message. shake yer dicks, for example, is a clever idea, i think, done simply and the better for being simple. i would imagine each one of her songs sprang from a kernal of an idea: what the world needs is a song about x, that subverts y, that parodies z. along the way maybe other ideas glom onto that main kernal.

the reason i bring them up is because it's like a spectrum from peaches: i am a musician fucking with the [music] system, to tracy: i am a performance artist [if that term grates, use its cognate, audio-visual artist] fucking with the [art] system. with the chicks in the middle, sort of, because they push the art theory element, but it's a bit of a good-natured con.

some songwriters do not have specific messages with each song. they write in a freeform way, or they tell stories or convey vibes or whatever.. and many artists are the same way. like, a landscape or portrait or whatever is more an expression of the artist's personality and capability, and maybe just difference, than an expression of the artist's theoretical side.

re: tracy's refreshing confusion. i doubt she is as honest about the videos as you think. she probably had ideas that she wanted to convey with the videos, and after doing it for a few years, has realized those ideas were boring her or contradictory or whatever. to some extent... i mean, she's also still quite young. when your techniques are not perfected, neither are you able to just crystalize your thoughts into messages.

― mig, Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:10 (twenty-one years ago)

artist's responsibility = to make art. once it's been made, any intentions the artist might have had becomes irrelevant anyway. the only context that matters is the context in which you hear it, not the context in which he/she makes it. i have no idea in the world, for example, why stuart murdoch wrote "piazza, new york catcher," or what he wants me to hear when i hear it. nor do i care. i think it's a great song and there's nothing in the world he can say to make me like it any more or less.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 19:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I prefer artistic intentions to remain ambiguous as well-- it is more satisfying to me when a piece can have possible meanings on different levels. I don't like being preached to, either. When I make art I'd rather just try to convey a mood or feeling or personal idea in a way that someone else can interpret however they want to.

― Blood and sparkles (bloodandsparkles), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 20:26 (twenty-one years ago)

and bla bla bla she’s a grad student at Bard (this is what happens I guess when smart people try to make music).

well gee everyone knows music's better when it's made by dumb people.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 9 December 2003 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

four months pass...

exactly how has the artist not been responsible? through the inability to convey a message through one line of a 60 minute telephone conversation or just by being smart? maybe the artist gave the message in the other 59 minutes of the phone conversation. in fact mesages change or should change with exposure to new information and other work (age). the part the audience leaves with in largely due to that audience and not the artist.

― bufo terrestris, Sunday, 18 April 2004 03:21 (twenty-one years ago)

artists don't always know why they do what they do, it's sort of like channeling energy to be interpreted by other artists or by the artist at a later time, or convey a message that other people, not necessarily artists, may or may not have thought they were looking for. the art i personally enjoy is when others find the meaning and tell me what it was i made, and then it makes sense to me. f*ck responsibility and start collaborating w/ yr audience. at least, thats what i got out of Tracy's show when she performed recently in atlanta. thanks for playing. n

― bev burly, Tuesday, 20 April 2004 17:21 (twenty-one years ago)

dude, Wynne Greenwood's ass is so hugh.

― randy castello, Tuesday, 20 April 2004 22:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Well she's the one worried her performance doesn't have the substance to stand up to art criticism

that's a completely legit position for an artist to have!

this thread reminds me of that neil labute movie, the shape of things.

― tricky disco, Tuesday, 20 April 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

"I could not believe what I saw. It wasn't anything I was expecting."

but most surely the Bunny must be Punished!! All Bunnies must be punished to purge us of our Gross Profligacy and Unseemly Hairiness!! and yea though the Egg be Smooth and Unvarnished, It (and Them all)
likewise is Evil because of its vile Contamination within, which
speaketh with intimacy to female, uh, parts and such like and, uh
well, there's hair too and I'm feeling somewhat, uh, moist...
NOOOO, YEA VERILY AND FORSOOTH THe EGgS MUST BE STROKED AND RUBBED, uh, no no i mean MUST BE STOMPED AN DRUBBED OUT and uh, and,
uh, must be taken out of pants and, uh, stomped and rubbed rubbed out
no vile evil eggs no somooth warm uh uh
gotta go..

oRb-on-high

― bobby chatham, Wednesday, 21 April 2004 14:35 (twenty-one years ago)

This is such a transparent display of the church's view on masturbation - flogging the rabbit and eggs. I mean come on! It's sort of like your recently widowed grandmother getting a makeover in attempts to make a fresh circuit on the singles scene- it's still a old bag of bones under all of the shiny laquer.

― jopey borge, Wednesday, 21 April 2004 14:50 (twenty-one years ago)

>Does an artist have to know HOW his/her art works; does he even really have to have goals?

but can they at all?
Duchamp's paper The Creative Act is apt here.
paraphrasing...
what an artist tends to realize and actually does realize is like a mathmatical correlation between the unexpressed but intended and the unintentionally expressed.

― j. w, Wednesday, 21 April 2004 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)

i brought a sample of writing into a creative writing class at NYU once, read it outloud, and my professor asked, "did you INTEND to write that for the class?," for which i had no answer. actually, i didn't understand the question, even after going home to look up INTEND in the dictionary. I read a piece about a girl named Carol who was sitting in on a park bench next to a fountain with no water, with ketchup that had fallen from the sky a few hours earlier dried up on her leg that was being lapped up by a puppy with big paws.. the astute professor explained to the class that the dried ketchup was actually menstrual blood, and i agreed although it was news to me.

― e.m.p., Thursday, 22 April 2004 15:45 (twenty-one years ago)

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