Open (Text) Meat Sandwich
Sep. 14th, 2010 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tartysuzFurther to my musing about Jana Sterbak's meat dress and Lady Gaga's take on the concept, a friend of mine who is attending art school in England sent me a link to an article that quotes one of her tutors on the same subject (he also invoked Sterbak's meat dress):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11297832
So here's the mainstream BBC publishing an article that applies several different discourses to describe or interpret Lady Gaga's meat dress exhibition (as I like to think of it). This approach is a break from the "code-breaking" school of art interpretation, the idea that this one thing is symbolic of this other thing over here. So many artists have embraced an open approach to their work that code-breaking is an inadequate way to approach art. In this instance, we do have Lady Gaga talk about possible interpretations, and how she may have a different interpretation at a different time.
I discussed all of this with R over supper, then we heard almost exactly that same last sentence (about something having different meanings to the same person at different times) come from the character of a priest in Being Human (episode 1.6 in the UK series). Of course, this excited me to no end. "There is that open text thing again!"
It also occurred to me that despite being the topic du jour in the pop press -- and looming large over my own personal sense of what's possible in art for lo these many years -- Sterbak's meat dress doesn't even exist anymore. It was ephemera. The artifact itself was never meant to last: it was meant to decay. And yet the discourse around it is alive and well and on the Ellen DeGeneres show today!
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ETA
She used cheap cuts of meat! The Argentinean who made the dress said the meat was from his family butcher. Butchers interviewed by the New York Daily Post estimated that she wore about $100 worth of beef. So really, if you made this dress yourself, and used locally produced meat, you could have a 100-mile dress for $100, while supporting local industries. You would only wear this dress once, but how many non-biodegradable $5,000 frocks get worn only once to the MVAs? So now I give her points for being both frugal and environmentally friendly-ish.
p.s. I love this graphic!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11297832
So here's the mainstream BBC publishing an article that applies several different discourses to describe or interpret Lady Gaga's meat dress exhibition (as I like to think of it). This approach is a break from the "code-breaking" school of art interpretation, the idea that this one thing is symbolic of this other thing over here. So many artists have embraced an open approach to their work that code-breaking is an inadequate way to approach art. In this instance, we do have Lady Gaga talk about possible interpretations, and how she may have a different interpretation at a different time.
I discussed all of this with R over supper, then we heard almost exactly that same last sentence (about something having different meanings to the same person at different times) come from the character of a priest in Being Human (episode 1.6 in the UK series). Of course, this excited me to no end. "There is that open text thing again!"
It also occurred to me that despite being the topic du jour in the pop press -- and looming large over my own personal sense of what's possible in art for lo these many years -- Sterbak's meat dress doesn't even exist anymore. It was ephemera. The artifact itself was never meant to last: it was meant to decay. And yet the discourse around it is alive and well and on the Ellen DeGeneres show today!
==
ETA
She used cheap cuts of meat! The Argentinean who made the dress said the meat was from his family butcher. Butchers interviewed by the New York Daily Post estimated that she wore about $100 worth of beef. So really, if you made this dress yourself, and used locally produced meat, you could have a 100-mile dress for $100, while supporting local industries. You would only wear this dress once, but how many non-biodegradable $5,000 frocks get worn only once to the MVAs? So now I give her points for being both frugal and environmentally friendly-ish.
p.s. I love this graphic!
