“I think it’s a really good thing to put yourself in a situation where you feel really uncomfortable because I think things can come out of that discomfort.” Laurel Nakadate
Visited the blossoming art world darling Laurel Nakadate’s show at the Carpenter Center for the Performing Arts (up through December 22, 2011). She’s the Museum School BFA, Yale MFA female video artist who made a splash with her 2000 video Oops!, which filmed Nakadate dancing to Britney’s infamous hit from that year in the private homes of middle-aged men that she had “met” (or, had tried to pick her up) in New Haven. Britney sings “Oops…I did it again. I played your heart. I’m not that innocent,” while Nakadate dances around the humble apartments of sometimes stoic, sometimes pathetic, sometimes leering old men. Whether or not the videos are self-obsessed youtube quality smut, exploitative of loneliness and aging, witty reversals of conventional power dynamics, or socially relevant contemporary art work, they are memorable. ”I also like the idea of turning the tables,” Nakadate says in a Believer interview, “the idea of [the men] thinking that they’re in charge or that they’re in power and they’re asking me for something and then I turn it on them, where I’m the director and the world is really my world.” To me, it kind of feels like Sophie Calle meets Ryan Trecartin, where such a hybrid would say in the same interview (as Nakadate does): “going out into the world and discovering little tragedies” and “a lot of my work stems from things that I see in pop culture.”
In my opinion, the show was a mixed bag. I loved works like the birthday party video, where Nakadate brought over a cake to a man’s house and proceeded to slowly light the candles, have him sing her happy birthday, and then eat cake together. These films exude the awkwardness of intimate rituals among strangers, longing, and boredom. Or, her film exorcism, where she performs an exorcism with an older man in his decrepit home. One scene shows him twitching with seizure-like eroticism on the bed while Nakadate chants “Go away bad spirits,” and he repeats her. Another of this genre, “Beg for your life,” shows Nakadate pointing a fake handgun at single men on their knees as she instructs them to “beg for your life,” which they do with more and less conviction. At least one man can’t stop laughing. These films border on the intimacy of a two person exchange in a private space and the more public and fictional scenarios that Nakadate also stages. For instance, she acts her death in a Wonder Woman-esque outfit during a road trip across the southwest in her video “I want to be the one to walk in the sun.” My favorite part shows her faking her death with blood on her chest and a brown substance flowing from her mouth as she is held by a portly elderly gentleman in front of Mount Rushmore, but another moment depicts a similar scene in front of a biker gang on a western highway. Playful, childish role-playing, these films leave Nakadate much more vulnerable than her lonely collaborators. I suppose the two genres are not actually that far apart. Nakadate hints at this, when she says, “Yeah, a lot of people look at the work and they think that I’m just being evil or pointing the finger at these pathetic souls, but I’ve always seen the work as trying to make the connection with men who no one really spends time with.” I think her work is centrally about a desire to connect. Maybe that is why I didn’t like the pieces that just showed her dancing on a beach or posed in a girl scout uniform in front of the burning twin towers. I couldn’t connect with her posing, and anyway, I would rather witness the awkwardness of social interaction than endure it myself.
