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Violence to Glam Rock
by B. Ruby Rich
from Sight & Sound magazine, December 1996

In one corner of a pristine gallery space, a crummy sofa and armchair flank a cocktail table piled with magazines, while the old colour TV set it faces plays an odd videotape over and over. A plaque of mock needlepoint identifies the scene as 'Domestic Violence', an installation by Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon. The gallery is located within the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, where Hall of Mirrors: Art and Films Since 1945 is currently on exhibition. The irony is that Haynes/Vachon's installation, specifically commissioned by the Wexner for the occasion, is stealing the thunder from the meta-show.

'Domestic Violence' is a clever, provocative video intervention that tackles the assumption of the art world and of popular culture simultaneously. If one approaches the TV set from behind, as viewers must, a barrage of soundtracks slowly clarifies into excerpts from a coterie of famously violent movies: A Clockwork Orange, Deliverance, Dirty Harry, Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers. Once on the sofa, however, the visitor is shocked to discover that the TV screen is filled not with familiar actors but with play-acting cats, dogs and babies.

Vachon and Haynes have restaged ultraviolent classics with a cast composed of the most beloved and anthropomorphised embodiments of family values: pets and children. All scenes are shot ad edited exactly as the originals were - with the essence changed, of course, by this key substitution. 'Domestic Violence' ambushes its audience at the intersection of sentimentality and outrage, splicing discourses of violence and innocence onto a screen the two were never meant to occupy simultaneously. If some viewers' systems of identification have trouble surviving this crazy blend of sacred images and demonised soundtracks, other gallery denizens may have trouble withstanding the assault of popular culture represented by both the trashy objects and the plebeian sounds of this artistic trojan horse.

It's not incidental that the installation was commissioned for the Wexner's presentation of Hall of Mirrors. The Wexner is an unusual presence in the US arts scene: built in the late 80s under the old-fashioned aegis of a single patron, it is nevertheless such a visionary enterprise that its 1989 facility included in-house video postproduction facilities in the original plant, and it is committed to a program of bringing artists in to use them. Bill Horrigan, the Wexners's Media Arts curator, oversees an Art and Technology division where AVID editing rooms and a Beta on-line suite welcome 20 to 30 artists a year: Laura Mulvey edited Disgraced Monuments there, while a recent visit found Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas and performance artist Jesusa Rodriguez at work on their satiric version of Cosi fan tutti.

Horrigan has also been able to commission a limited number of projects, such as Chris Marker's Silent Movie (another installation). This spring, Isaac Julien will complete his ongoing trilogy there, and Julie Dash will work on her CD-ROM. There's nothing else remotely like the Wexner on the US arts landscape, though it's exciting to imagine how different the art world would be if dozens were to follow its example - the closest that we got at the moment being the international tours undertaken by some of its commissioned pieces.

While there are no immediate plans to send 'Domestic Violence' to London, its makers will be flying over very soon. Velvet Goldmine, the next film to be made by the team of Haynes (director) and Vachon (producer) which brought us Poison and Safe, starts production in London in January. Velvet Goldmine will be their biggest-budgeted project to date (with money from CiBy 2000 and a US distributor just now finalising its commitment). Set in the fictionalised world of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and the whole Glam-Rock scene of the 1970s, it will star Jonathan Rhys-Myers and Ewan McGregor. Haynes admits to a long fascination with Glam Rock, which he listened to in college, and sounds eager to turn his vision to an era of androgyny that preceded today's rugged version of homosexuality: "Glam Rock was so Wildean in its notions of artificiality and completely constructed identity. And it had such a spirit of curiosity about multiple selves and sexual orientations."

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