At the University of Chicago, we have the tendency to be wrapped up in the past. Many of the texts we read are to give us a solid foundation built upon ‘The Canon.’ Life does, however, progress, and I believe that it important to understand the modern world. We tend to overlook modernity’s effects on areas, specifically the arts. When we think of the effects of technology, we always consider the socio-economic effects; yet, we fail to notice the ripples within litero-poetic communities. There are currently several influencing figures that are bridging the supposed gap between technology and poetry. Two such figures are Chicago’s own Judd Morrissey and Mark Jeffery (for bios, see below).

Recently, both of them came to my poetry class to talk about themselves, their new project, and answer some of our questions.

Judd started out by talking about his early works, his first being “The Jew’s Daughter”—one of the canonical works of e-literature. The hypertext embedded in the piece creates a sense of liquidity in the reading. It is here that the idea of a “very fluid and circular reading,” seen in later works, begins. This type of new connectivity is prevalent within the works of many electronic writers because it is a never-before-seen facet of the electronic medium.

“My Name is Captain, Captain” was one of Morrissey’s next major published pieces. However, if you try to find it online or in the library, you will run into some difficulty. Why? Simply because it was published on CD. Technology advances at a rapid pace, and everyone must try and rush to keep up with it. When CDs first came about, they were perfect for carrying large quantities of data which made them seem to be a viable medium. Now-a-days, CDs are seen as outdated and difficult to manage, especially with P2P sharing and the ease with which personal websites can be created. The effect of outdated electronics on e-lit is indicative of technology’s force in general. Also, the poetry cannot be reproduced in website form due to a legal contract. This should serve as a warning to all artists to check the sustainability of the medium and the control of reproduction.

Mark Jeffery and Judd Morrissey: Rehearsal of The Precession

While these two themes of fluidity and new technology prevail over e-poetry, they do not give a real sense of what the term means. The first part of the term “e” seems simple; it refers to ‘e’lectronic, meaning that the work must actively involve technology, usually computers, in some form or fashion. The electronic component can be anything from hypertexts and links to video and sound editing to e-distribution i.e. blogs, RSS feeds, etc. This range lends itself also to the poetic side of things. With the new electronic medium, poetry comes off of the page and, even, leaves the realm of text at times. In fact, the mobility allowed by technology fuels many artists to new and unknown realms and media, whether in the form of a website, a video, a performance, or a textual piece.

This fusion of bytes with letters is something that everyone should watch since it heralds the new age of poetics. While it is important to read Ovid, Byron, Frost, and other canonical poets, a fresh canon is being created right now, right here. The future of poetry is being written at this moment and we should pay attention. Soon, the three words of Judd Morrissey will be highlighted in modern arts and poetics-“Choreography, context, and chorus.”

Welcome to an age of “less writing and more parsing.”

Judd Morrissey calls himself a “code artist” and fuses the electronic/technological with the poetic and performance. He did not start as a poet and, in fact, had never really done a serious writing workshop before college. It was late in college when one of his thesis review professors, the esteemed poet Robert Kelly, pointed him to the MFA at Brown where he was introduced to hypertext programming and literature, such as the program Story Space and the piece “Patchwork Girl” by Shelley Jackson. He went on to release “The Jew’s Daughter,” “My Name is Captain Captain,” and “The Last Performance.” Currently, he is working with Mark Jeffrey on a project called “The Precession (Living Newspapers Version” which will be happening June 1st through June 25th at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and teaches at the SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago).

Try this as a little experiment: turn on the TV or a major news website. What do you see? Chances are, you are witnessing Kate Gosselin cry on TV, Tiger Woods return to golf, or the latest reality TV show that wants to turn YOU into a star. Usually, you don’t follow such programming (I know I don’t). But now that you’re sitting in front of the TV, you ask yourself, what do all of these things have in common?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the inability of the middle-class American to keep up with their own dreams of financial stability in the midst of skyrocketing inflation, wage stagnation and a new apex of social inequality and wealth distribution. These words aren’t mine—they’re iterated and proved by economists and analysts much more qualified than I. But more poignantly, in the ashes of the mortgage boom, and in today’s weak economy, the American Dream has changed. Arguably, the sublime mediocrity we were seeking in the middle of the last century—the home in the suburbs, the white picket fence, the housewife greeting her working husband with an apron and a tray of frosted cupcakes as he walks in after an hard day’s work—has been glossed and whitewashed over by much shinier ideas. And some of those ideas involve lights, cameras, and action.

For a case in point, I give you the most popular television show on TV for the better part of the decade, American Idol. With ratings easily in the Top 3 since its debut (see Nielson TV ratings for exact quotes), and given how much TV the average American watches (up to 8 hours a day, also according to Nielson), there’s no question that mainstream TV can give us some leads on the pulse of the American psyche. One day, as I myself contributed to this statistic by watching an old episode of auditions online, there was something one (somewhat desperate) contestant said in front of the judges that really grabbed me. He seemed nervous and ill at ease, and when asked why he was so nervous, he said something along the lines of, “Well, look at this. All these lights and people. And here I am in front of you, in the Kodak Theatre. This is the American Dream!” One judge agreed (who happened to be Ellen DeGeneres). “It absolutely is,” she said.

And he wasn’t the only one. I can’t tell you how many others auditioning said they were doing this “for their family”, or “to give their children a better life”. One heart-wrenching story, from a father of an autistic child who was auditioning, had the hope that, maybe if he went far on the show, he could finally afford the proper medical care for his son. The point is these weren’t just musicians or thrill-seekerswaiting for their big break. They were pastors and oil-rig workers. They were ordinary Americans, and some of them were out of ideas.

Perhaps there was a time when fame and fortune were sought by those trapped in small towns, or dreadful jobs like Marilyn Monroe at the factory assembly line. But in our age of live fast and die hard, something tells me that time is over.

Call me old-fashioned and naive, but I thought the American Dream was about one thing, first and foremost—work. Just unglamorous, unadulterated work, and the idea that you proved yourself through it.

“I can’t believe this is happening! It’s real!” Idol contestants would say, over and over again. It may be happening, for a short while, but as most of these people are bound to find out, it is far from real. How did we get here? How did the get-rich or die-tryin’ mentality come to represent the American Dream? While there are no easy answers, the TV will always give us some clues. And some of those clues tell us that we’re starting to mortgage too much of what we’ve built for a few minutes under the blinding lights of second-rate stardom. And when those lights do go off, we come to realize that the theatre we stand in—the one where we’ve attempted to pursue our narcissistic desires—has been empty all along. Maybe, I think, it’s time we start on a journey that is about more than just ourselves.

Every once in a while, and especially in this great city of Chicago, you’ll hear someone talking about the American Dream—on the subway, in a café, at Saks Fifth Avenue. You’ll hear it manifest in many forms, ones which may not seem very obvious at first, but will all, upon reflection, inevitably touch that tireless optimism that refuses defeat or surrender. Here are some entirely fictional, entirely plausible, scenarios:

(Middle aged family man on L) My daughter got accepted to NYU, and she really wants to go, but it’s obviously much more expensive than a state school. Lets out a sigh. Things are really tight now at work and his wife Sharon is pregnant, but how do you say no to your daughter’s dreams? No, we’re gonna figure this out. Maybe a second mortgage.

(Girl on cell phone at Saks) Ohmigodohmigodohmigod. I want that Chanel bag. No, I need it. I definitely need it, so I’m buying it. Just look at it, it’s so cute. My creditors are going to kill me, but, ugh, screw them. I hate creditors, they’re so lame.

(Iranian immigrant speaking to a friend at neighborhood café) Yes, of course there are challenges to life here. Of course you miss home sometimes, your mothers cooking, all of that. But in America you can be…whatever you want. The idea that you can let go of all your fears and disappear into the crowd. Such a thing could only happen in this country.

Make it work. Don’t say no. You are what you do. There’s something incredibly refreshing about the kind of perseverant let’s-eat-our-cake attitude Americans have, one that I personally haven’t been able to find anywhere else. And yet, there’s something very sinister happening to their dreams, and (at the risk of sounding melodramatic) it’s happening as we speak, rumbling beneath our feet.

Now, I’m not a historian, but by all accounts, all the American history professors I know would agree that at the end of Second World War, things were good for American families. Now, these families are likely white and wearing very starched clothing. I realize that. I say this with full acknowledgement of the many faults of the social order of the time when it came to women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, and the anti-smoking lobby. That said, the 1950s may seem slightly drab, if not incredibly hokey time to live, where the most subversive thing one could find was Elvis gyrating his hips to “Hound Dog”, but consider this: A family could own their own home and live comfortably on only one parent’s full-time salary, send their kids to college when college was still affordable under said one-parent income, and taking care of one’s own arm and leg didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Well, 60 years later, and things have changed profoundly. I’m not an economist, but if you can show me how, over the last 30 years, wages haven’t remained virtually flat, inflation on an unrelenting rise, and health care and college tuition (two of the most significant expenditures for the middle class family) absolutely ballooning, I’m gonna have to – to quote President Obama – take a look at your math. And neither of us would want that because I’m actually not very good at math. Put that with figures of distribution of wealth, and the picture gets a little scarier.

Since the 70s, the wealthy have been getting wealthier, with the result that now, in 2010 income inequality is at an all time high, even trumping the Great Depression (this is a study conducted by an Economics Professor at USC).

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and I think the question that intrigues me most of all is, what now? What do do-or-die, don’t-fuck-with-me Americans who don’t have Van Goghs hanging in their Madison Avenue penthouses have to say now?
Well, as it turns out, they’ve got ideas of their own. Stay tuned, folks.

In honor of Persian New Year …

Even as a child in a photograph taken 58 years ago she still has those same careful, pensive and protective eyes. In the black and white image, the textured field in which she and two other girls lie is grey. She wears a white, chiffon dress that has a softness to contrast the stark, sharp blades of dry grasses and flowers. What stands out in the picture is the three girls, their white dresses and smooth faces, and Suad’s strong, dark eyes.

She was born in 1944 in Basra, Iraq, the hometown of her mother, but spent the majority of her childhood in the family’s home in Tehran, Iran. Suad’s family was one of the many families that fled Iran at the dawn of the 1979 revolution. Her family moved to London initially with the hopes of waiting out the tensions in Iran.

“How I came to know crispy rice is from childhood,” she said.

As she speaks now her eyes are questioning. The quality of her glance is reproduced in her movements; as she cooks she moves imperceptibly and with exactness, keeping her food close to her. She cuts Bulgarian Feta into a salad: an amount, you’d estimate is too much; but after you take each bite you’re left with a plate that has traces of creamy liquid, perhaps a shred of lettuce and nothing more than the satisfaction of entirely well-balanced forkfuls. You learn not to question her.

To Suad, crispy rice, as she calls it, or tahdig in Farsi, is standard rice that accompanies stews. “I grew up in Iran and that’s what they do with rice,” she said.

Just returned from watching the band Califone, one of Chicago’s own, play a live soundtrack to their Sundance-selected film All My Friends are Funeral Singers at Lincoln Hall. The film lives in the world of the supernatural, with superstitions lingering on the screen (e.g. It’s bad luck to say ‘pig’ on a fishing boat) followed by clips relevant to the particular lore. Most of the clips take place in the home of Zel (played by Angela Bettis), a fortune teller. Zel lives with a group of ghosts who help the business by lending their other worldly powers to call winning horses for a comical gambler (desperate and sleazy in turns), heal headaches, and channel the voices of dead loved ones. The ghosts, perpetually dressed in white, play soulful, urgent, surreal music in rooms throughout the quaintly decorated home — music that was, on this Tuesday night, played live by the band and filled the large acoustic room.

The film and music are both experimental, but keep from being overly meandering. While the film introduces many open-ended questions and artistic sequences, the character definitions are clear and there is a linear and accessible story arc, as Zel and the ghosts realize that the ghosts, who Zel embraces as family, are trapped inside the house by a legacy spell that thwarts the ghosts’ newfound desire to move on. The band members (Joe Adamik, Jim Becker, Ben Massarella, Tim Rutili) multi-tasked between multiple instruments (note the contraption of bells inside the briefcase above) and vocals. From kitschy decorations trembling dramatically atop likewise kitschy furniture, to religious overtones as two ghosts discuss their vision of heaven and hell, Califone offered a wide range of soundscapes that interacted fluently with the narrative and the film’s digetic sounds. Califone has a previous track record of performing cinematic music, having contributed live improvised soundtracks to silent films.

Afterward, the band played songs from their new album, eponymous after the film. Due to the configuration of the equipment — facing the movie screen — the band was forced to play the whole set with their backs to the audience! (The band extended a joke and their apologies.)

Califone plays again on March 10th at the same venue, this time as a concert instead of as a live soundtrack.

The year’s technology: hands-on and hassle free.

This past week the streets of America have been abuzz with technological news regarding items that until recently, we never knew we needed, but now, will never be able to live without. One such item has been the Apple iPad—the iPhone with the really big screen and a personal message that says, “Hey, you, average consumer. Give us more of your money for redundant-but -flashy gizmos. Love, Apple”. But that is not the technological wonder I am recommending you today. No, this device of which I speak is far more humane and comforting than the feel of cold steel and plexiglass in your palm.

Meet Roxxxy, the lady robot powered for your own hands-on experience. Marketers have labeled her the most advanced talking sex robot yet. According to her home at TrueCompanion.com, she comes complete with soft silicone “skin”, voice recognition and speech-synthesis software, and even 5 distinct personalities in varying friskiness to match the consumer’s, er, preferences. She even has sensors in her womanly organs that are to gather a vocal response when touched. Barring any major malfunctions, and as long as her battery doesn’t run out, she is yours for about $7,000. While her creators have assumed that Roxxxy is only meant for a niche clientele (or at least one hopes) preorders have been flooding in, in the thousands, since her debut at the Las Vegas Adult Entertainment Expo last month.

This story is disturbing on so many levels, but where to begin? For me, personally, it’s not the idea that there are thousands of lonely (and gullible) men who are actually eager to spend $7,000 on a sex robot than say, on a high end prostitute, who is, at the very least, a real-live person. (I’m not trying to make an argument for prostitution; I’m only trying to argue the alternatives to such an investment). Rather, it’s the idea that today’s technology, as embodied by Roxxxy, can be manipulated and marketed to replace what is arguably the most human and intimate of functions—human procreation. Now, in 2010, there is no real need for single, lonely men who “have trouble meeting girls” to do anything to establish a real personal connection with a member of the opposite sex if they consider the idea just too horrifying or haven’t left their house for the past two months since they’ve started to build the next supercomputer by hand.

Similarly, the iPhone application Brushes offers “mobile painting”, and such “paintings” have actually appeared on the cover of the New Yorker several times. Why bother, Brushes argues, with years of training and tuition and messy paints when all you need is a gizmo on an iPhone? Once again, with the right amount of greenbacks and with not a whole lot of self-esteem, technology is trying to make things that are supposed to be difficult, very easy. Creating and sustaining relationships that might involve sex can be one of the most exhaustive things one can ever do, and yet, today, a high-tech blow-up doll has managed to do just that. Roxxxy may never turn into a real live human being, but hey, at least we humans are willing to settle for what we pay for, without having to put in too much effort. A Brushes painting may have not taken the training or contemplation that a normal painting would require, but if the New Yorker can put it on its cover, then clearly then it must be art enough, no? In other words, we’re finding all kinds of ways for the instrumentality of technology to replace tasks that would usually require input from our emotions, our moral judgment and human esthetic, and I’m starting to wonder if one day we’d like to get rid of these purely human capacities altogether. Just as long as we get the job done, we’re starting to care less and less how it’s done.

Well, as with my take on sex with robots, I think I’ll just have to say no.

He’s known to everyone he meets as ‘the lightbulb guy’. Parents, friends and neighbors will collect used parts and bulbs in bags for the next time he stops by. Harris started out in commercial advertising, designing ads and illustrations for McDonald’s and Suave, among others. He later switched into lighting as a hobby when he moved into a house in which he decided to make everything. “Everything … should be filled with lightbulbs,” he says. I asked what inspired him, and, simply put, the answer was ‘everything’. It may begin with a certain spring or lightbulb, but “one idea begets the next idea, ” says Harris. “Fortunately, it keeps coming.” This partially explains Harris’s versatility — he repaints and repurposes lamps, but has also taken on larger projects such as antiquing kitchens.

From used shot glasses to mink hats to heavy duty rope, Harris’s work is transforming junk into art. Although green has become a fad and using recycled materials has become a “thing to do,” for Harris it’s always been simply a cheap and sensible way of creating. There is beauty in discarded things, he says, and “You can make lights out of anything. I like to think everyone can afford it.”

“Is there a struggle between producing the work people will buy and producing the work you like?” I asked. He replied, “You [have to] do what you want because you don’t get to do what you want often enough . . . A lot of people don’t get the beauty of [a lot of my work]. And I don’t care. I like it.” But often enough, he says, “People trust what you like, that’s why they like what you do.”

Favorite artists, one living, one dead – go.

Living: Chuck Close, painter

Dead: Jasper Johns … “I think he’s dead,” says Harris. (He’s actually still  living … but we’ll let it slide.)

Harris’s fixtures are known to trickle on to Scout after shows and exhibits, at 5221 N. Clark St., 773-275-5700. Or you can call Harris at 773-332-1001.

The next and last even for Chicago Artists Month is the Artists at Work Forum on Thursday, October 29 at 6 pm at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington Street, followed by an after party at the Hard Rock Hotel. Visit www.studiochicago.org for more information.

We all know that polygamy is not a new phenomenon. According to Richard Wright, author of The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (1994), many human societies throughout the ages have been polygamous (see sidebar [below]).

In America, conservative Christians and politicians often couple polygamy with gay marriage as a threat to the sanctity of the institution. The hasty condemnation of these marriages as “wedlocks of evil” gives me pause. After all, I am a supporter of gay marriage. I’ve seen that it works here in America. So can polygamy work?

For Isis Aquarian, polygamy didn’t just work for her and her family, “it was pretty awesome.” Aquarian was a member of a 1970s commune in the Hollywood Hills founded by natural foods restauranteur Jim Baker. Baker’s restaurant, founded in 1969, was called “The Source,” and it was a magnet for hippies and celebrities on Sunset Boulevard. Eventually, servers and cooks of the restaurant moved into a mansion together and Baker (also known as Father Yod) took thirteen wives. Aquarian loved it. On a story on NPR’s Day to Day she told Jennifer Sharpe how “it worked perfectly. We never had a problem as far as our energy with him.”

Similarly, on another NPR program, Weekend Edition Saturday, Pauline Bartolone found a Muslim family living in San Diego who was very thankful for their polygamous lifestyle. Hasana said of her relationship with her husband Ali and his second wife Asila, “I like it, in terms of getting a break—not having to be with the man 24/7.” She calls Asila, “a lifesaver.”

But it’s one thing for a man to split his time with two women, and quite another for him to split his time with thirteen. Aquarian admits that the energy of twelve other wives didn’t always jive with Baker’s legal wife. As Aquarian says, “She never signed up for that…She stayed but she always had a problem with it.”

Robin’s attitude harkens to the feelings of Barbara Dutton Henrickson, the legal—albeit fictional—wife of Bill Henrickson in the HBO series Big Love. Barb and Bill got married in college and ten years after their first child was born Bill married Nicolette. And then
he married Margene. Although Nicki and Marg knew what they “signed up for,” Barb often resents getting her husband only two nights a week, plus the change.

Big Love may be overly dramatic (Ali and Hasana laughed at it when it came on the air), but its portrayal of the polygamous compounds of Utah raises a disturbing point. In the reports coming out of Eldorado, the mainstream media is mainly focusing on child brides and abuses to young girls. But the polygamous system is also harmful to boys.

In a telling scene from Big Love, a fourteen-year-old from a polygamous compound, Rhonda Volmer, is scolded for flinging some woo at a boy her age. Rhonda is promised in marriage to the sexagenarian leader of this compound—Nicki’s father—Roman Grant. The fourteen-year-old boy in this picture has no chance competing for Rhonda’s attention—Roman is fierce and he is a “prophet.” He may be forced out of the compound because he won’t be able to find a wife.

In Eldorado, social workers are finding young males forced out of their communities because of competition with other (often older and more powerful) males. The boys who are kicked out of polygamous communities of the Southwest are called the “lost boys.” The problem is that lost boys become lost men.

In his Essay on the Principles of Population (1826) Thomas Malthus taught us that when natural resources diminish, competition for those precious resources grows. If each man had three wives, a lot of men would find themselves out of luck. As we are already beginning to see in China, whose one child policy has increased the ratio of males to females, the artificial limitation on the amount of women leads to almost certain social disharmony. Political scientists call these large groups of unmarried young men “bare branches,” and they are just as lost as the lost boys.

Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer write in their 2004 book Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, “bare branches are more likely than other males to turn to vice and violence.” Hudson and den Boer project that by 2020, in China and India, “bare branches will make up 12 to 15 percent of the young adult male population.”

I don’t think polygamy is evil. I think that it can work in some circumstances—perhaps if it is only two women to a man. But while it may work in individual homes, if you scale polygamy to a critical mass and do the math, one quickly realizes that a functioning polygamous society is a myth.

Polygamy/Polygyny
When talking about polygamy, it’s important to distinguish polygyny from polyandry. Polygyny, the practice of one man having multiple wives, is fairly common throughout human history. Polyandry, the practice of a woman having multiple husbands, is “vanishingly rare” according to Jonathan Rauch, a columnist for National Journal.

The fold between the two sides of artistic sources met and closed into one lapidary clause: nature and technology are both spiritually inspirational and endlessly complex: a rich and challenging source for the artist. We now live, therefore, with an aesthetic sensibility that sources equally from nature and technological progress. It is a matter of purpose to then ?nd the individuals whose work or lives emulate this sensibility. This is not done by prettifying and highlighting the paltry scars of this antiquated schism. The comprehension of this sensibility is discovered no longer in their explanation but is displayed, absolutely, through their very formation.

Enter now:  a possible manifestation of this contemporary aesthetic sensibility. “All the Pretty Corpses,” the current exhibit at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago features projects by eight living and working artists. The tagline of this exhibit as well as the hearsay qualifier is: “Neo-Gothic.” In a stringent art historian’s mind, Neo-Gothic could rightfully conjure an image of an edifice with cascading glass flying-buttresses, gleaming metallic surfaces ornamented by glowing light, buzzing antennae, coiled wires, piling and protruding from bulbous pods, swirling and swelling from seemingly technological, or possibly, bio-technological necessity: a massive totem pulsating with human or human induced activity. One would replace the spires so familiar of our famous Gothic cathedrals with blasting beams of light. Our magni?cent stained-glass rose windows could be refitted with enormous plasma screens, displaying continually mutating images. This window would  be a monitor of progress, a panoramic surveillance of construction and expansion. This portal, which once served as the delicate filter between the harsh earthly existence of the preRenaissance subject and enormously beautiful prospect of heaven, would be in its “neo” incarnate, no longer a filter between squalor and opulence but between the now and the metallic and digital future.

However, as of yet we do not have any edifices which resemble my description. We certainly do have veritable representations of this futuristic reincarnate: films and animated/comic literature offer us a glimmer of this stylized state.

Neo-gothic is mainstream as a concept but its creative fervor is still relegated to the basement hallways of high schools, the midnight salons in diners and in fringe music venues and clubs, and overwhelmingly, on the internet, prosaically qualified as a sub-culture. The Renaissance Society, as an institution, has continuously framed exhibits and featured individuals whose purpose and work could be quali?ed as experimental, counter-cultural or curious. So here, we find the Renaissance Society reaching deep inside the bowels of society, touching a group, a style and an ideal which has held dominion over the nether-creatures of the counter-culture for nearly three decades.

What appeared most blatantly curious about the exhibit during its opening was the complete lack of gothic personalities. In their clothing, accessories and manner of speaking one found nothing reminiscent of the markedly (i.e. stereotypically) gothic individual. No high-contrast makeup, no black, no leather and no occult paraphernalia. How then, we may ask, is this art neo-gothic if not created by gothic individuals? Perusing web-sites devoted to displaying artwork of gothic sensibility one comes across delicately rendered images of princesses, dragons and satanic creatures. There are Giacometti-like scribbles of suffering lonesome individuals cowered in the corner of vast, cold cemented rooms. One finds pouting young girls with slick, long, black hair staring, plainly forward. One can only imagine that the source of these images, created by persons across the world, is their very selves. The imagined accessories of the gothic regalia rendered in ink and pencil drawings or actually fashioned from materials seem only to make sense if they come from an individual who appreciated and understood the aesthetics of this sub-culture: someone who would desire to share their creation amongst the like-minded.

So this synthesis of which I write, that cohesive perspective that does not highlight the opposition between nature and technology, but rather, highlights the in?nity of creation over the explanation of purpose is achieved through the presentation of the “neo-gothic” style by the curators at the Renaissance Society. In codifying several disparate artistic sensibilities in varying mediums of visual arts, the exhibit posits a counter-point to an increasingly insincere period of popularized artistic representation. Most conventionally executed are the ink drawings of Kacy Maddux. This artist, in utilizing gothic or occult symbolism—aspects of religious, mythic and the corporeal—has enveloped the urge (or angst) towards the infinity of creation in a series of sizeable pieces which covered an ample portion of the gallery walls. When studying the dynamism of these images, an almost inexhaustible source of inquisition towards a definition of a “what” materializes itself. The drawings are immaculately executed in clean, steady lines and curves and framed for the viewer to stand squarely and study their content. This inexhaustible source of inquisition is not a secondary inquiry into the drawings but is the very content of the drawings themselves.

Maddux explained during a question and answer session at the opening, the drawings are the representation of a folding and unfolding of a repetitive sentiment. This sentiment, impossible to represent directly, is achieved through meticulous and scrupulous expansion and retraction of an iconography of the artist’s invention. An iconography, as Maddux explains, could be conceived as a transitory language. The series of drawings display an extract from a personal catalogue of icons that form the grammar by which this language is constructed. As a reading of Maddux’s drawings carries itself towards a form of representation which expresses in its material and its consistent imagery the actuality of a sentiment or an occasion, her inclusion in the neo-gothic style further substantiates the polarity between a sub-culture and the respected “culture” as such. The images that are found in the wake of Maddux’s pen, working against conventional contemporary culture and its incestuous purveyors of representation, are exaltations of sincerity. This art does not parody a sentiment to the point of a hollow echo. There is no mark of the deathblow called kitsch to banish this project to the realm of instituted product. The mistake of miscomprehension through blundered abstraction was performed by certain artists of the early years of abstract expressionism, but we may now have found seriousness through excavating sub-cultures from their quasinarcissistic catacombs.

This sincerity is even more apparent in the installation/ sculpture of Chicago-area artist Tony Tasset. His Grotto (2005), amassing blood-colored candles in the mouth of a life-size stone-and-mortar-looking plaster shrine conjures images of occult ritual and miserable onerous devotion. At first the “neo-gothic” imagery seems apparent, almost to the point of triteness. On the aesthetic note: the grotto looks solid. As the candles melt while some still burning, the red languid wax scores trails down the appreciably stone-gray plaster walls and sprawls onto the floor: the overall effect is quite beautiful. To conjure further the feeling of devotion, reverence, or grief in the wake of tragedy, the Grotto was placed in the corner of the gallery. One has to step aside from the main course of the galler y and stand alone, facing the glaring mouth of the edifice, which larger than us, blocks our view of anything else.

However, Tasset’s commentary on the piece was the more poignant of appreciable elements. Tasset explained his disappointment in the contemporary monument or memorial. Placing his grotto in the same context as a contemporary memorial one immediately thinks of recent events which were later marked by objects. The shootings in Columbine served as the artist’s example. His apparent distaste for the minimalist monuments that serve as the perpetual reminders of unarguably horri?c events posited his artwork within the dynamic style of representation here termed neo-gothic. Why not conjure the blood and misery of the event in its respective memorial? In explaining the allure and bene?ts of this sentiment and noting his child’s attraction to goth and/or metal music, he described our current state of affairs as pretty awful. In a society where everyone professes his or her anger and couples society with shit, why not sing about that? Why not show the shit and the society together, in glowering directness? Tasset’s Grotto serves as the memorial for a fictionalized tragedy. His memorial addresses the materiality of the event: the darkness, the blood and the inevitable isolation, which follows human tragedy.

“All the Pretty Corpses” offers its audience a tour through a world which is nothing short of stimulus and engaging imagery. This exhibit also incorporates artists whose agendas extend beyond those possessed by their source, the youth sub-culture of “goth.” However, it would be quite contentious to write that the works of art and the position taken by the artists or the curators of the exhibit were refreshing. Refreshing would assume a reconstitution of a state of freshness of which is presently difficult to conceive. However, if the cathartic properties of art were ever to be as present as they are in the exhaustive performance of head banging, ritual and incantation-based lyricism and a frightfully accurate representation of anger and fear as are found in the music and musings of the goth milieu, the art that this state of mind inspired is certainly a step towards a moment of respite from suffocation. This sensibility could be an antidote to the choking insincerity so symptomatic of befuddled parody and the lurking and lascivious kitsch of mainstream culture.

La Rocco, himself a Black Metal guitarist in an Indiana Jones tribute band called Sallah, sat with me in the Pub to hoarsely talk over the sound of The Cranberries and the Allman Brothers Band and make sense of the often confused subcultures of goth and metal. I want to know: I saw art made by people aren’t self-proclaimed goths, so how can theirs be gothic art? At the heart of this dilemma is a particular piece in the gallery—a poster alphabetically listing metal albums from around the world: is that goth, too? Which genre encompasses the other?

We begin by considering the two subcultures, historically concurrent and close on the sociological family tree, as a Venn diagram. “The overlap isn’t as great as you might think,” La Rocco tells me, and at the heart of that is an inter-group hostility. “Goth people are inherently sissies,” he continues, “when you were in high school, that’s why those kids were Goths.” While goth culture is an offshoot that developed from the post-punk movement across the late 1970s and 1980s, it is now defined by appearance and lifestyle or attitude rather than by musical devotion. Metal, on the other hand, is not necessarily something you can see—La Rocco, for example, is wearing a nice black shirt and a blazer that is borderline hip—but you cannot be metal if you’re not a fan of the hornsand- headbanging music genre. Black Metal is a culture-inclusive exception that will be addressed later.

The genetic links between metal and goth, however, are as undeniable as a widow’s peak. Good old rebellious rock is the “missing link” that made possible the evolution of both other genres, though goth had to pass through the punk generation, and they have even intermingled in the Gothic Metal subgenre. And why shouldn’t they? They are both explicitly preoccupied with life’s darker colors. Each subculture’s monochromatic fashion and creation of self-selecting society stem from a strong impulse to break free of and oppose mainstream society.

Scandinavia is the birthplace of black metal, and Norse bands, who have been especially important in metal music, take pride in their heritage and homeland. Their music manifests the fascination with the Nordic landscape’s cold, snowy darkness and their cultural pride—or rather their cultural indignation. The sentiment that Christianity overtook Norse culture and religion like an invasive species is forefront in the attitudes of Black Metal bands, “and they’re livid,” explains La Rocco. Thus the rash of church arson inspired, if not perpetrated, by Mayhem. Thus the themes and sense of mythology and folklore that ostensibly inform death—not black—metal lyrics and style. It is not quite clear if the corpse paint and swords-and-leather regalia are meant to faithfully represent their Viking ancestors or if we should interpret these musicians as risen-from-the-dead avengers of their epoch. Are the metalheads thrashing along to their songs as concerned with history and cultural preservation? Not that I can tell, and while black metal culture demands a lifestyle choice of adherence to “evil in its most pure state,” the descriptor Euronymous so boldly coined as the principle of his own label, Deathlike Silence Productions, metal in general is the sort of thing you can love in your car, on the weekends, and in your iPod without jeopardizing your day job. As long as you cut that headbanger’s hair. In that sense, being a metal fan is a lot like being a fan of 80s music, Ludacris, or Melissa Etheridge. But I digress.

Goth culture, like metal, has many permutations within its culture, and you can also hide your underworldly tendencies from the boss if you so choose, but it is inherently more about lifestyle and less about musical taste. What began as an offshoot of 70s/80s post-punk culture in Britain spread across the pond and around the world, and now has its own manifesto, written by Canadian artist Charles Moffat two decades later. Moffat describes the Neo-Gothic movement (neo-gothic and gothic tend to be used interchangeably) as counterculture, seeking rebellion against government, mainstream society, and existing norms of sexuality and religion. There it is, the neat intersection of goth and metal. Goth and metal have influenced each other, from fashion choices to music. While Goths no longer seem to be defined by their music, goth music and its several subgenres exist and overlap on occasion with metal.

Since the surface similarities may confuse us, we must delve deeper order to apply these labels adeptly to art galleries, concerts, or people walking down the street. The politics and personalities of these two groups appear to bisect at one crucial point, that strange ethos regarding women and sex that is the line in the sand that divides so many groups and institutions. My own perception of goth culture—and mind you, I grew up in Los Angeles—is that it is a very coed collective, with perhaps a slight surplus of females. La Rocco’s estimation is that the balance of the audience at metal concerts rests at 10% female, but he doesn’t think that metal is inherently anti-woman. “Mostly it’s pro-sex,” he says, “but there is some black metal that might advocate rape.” Mayhem’s lyrics (check out darklyrics.com) don’t explicitly recommend violence against women per se, but I could never sing along to them the way I could to even explicit cuts of rap and hip-hop. There are some women in the bands, though, like Arch Enemy which is also goth music and Lacuna Coil, an Italian metal band with a female singer. I ask La Rocco about Evanescence, but apparently Evanescense : metal :: Hillary Duff : rock&roll. A lot of goth sexual imagery overlaps with sadomasochism, and indeed there is a sub-subculture known as fetish goth, but also has strong tendencies toward androgyny and Victorian aesthetics. Goth music is also known for its ambient quality rather than aggressiveness. La Rocco and I ponder whether we might posit the relationship between metal and goth as a complementary pairing between dominants and submissives, respectively.

Extremism, however, is one problem that plagues metal culture, however, but does not seem to infiltrate the goth world. Often, metal lyrics glorify warfare and violence—because they lead to evilness and death?—and over time this aesthetic has spawned or been co-opted by xenophobic and racist groups. The potent blend of anti-establishment ideas with primal aggression creates a unique ambiguity surrounding the principles of the music. The metal icons are presumably against “the Man,” but are they against democracy? Against peace? One website, www.metalheadsagainstracism.org, has confronted the problem by asking labels, bands, and metalheads to disavow the racist ideologies that have sprouted under the umbrella of metal culture. La Rocco describes the situation this way: “Despite its extreme right-wing tendencies, it’s very left wing,” pointing to the British group Napalm Death as one political example. “The skinheads are only into shitty metal.”

La Rocco and I have finished our cheap beers. As we head out of the bar so that I can hear some choice metal singles off his iPod, we run into Ralph Patrello, another local keeper of metal lore. We pose the goth-metal relationship question to Patrello, who verifies La Rocco’s theories with the pat explanation, “Your average [high school] Joe is afraid of the goth kids, but you bought your weed from the metal guys.” At the end of the day, that is what all the leather paraphernalia, red eyeliner, necromancy, and mayhem boil down to. Satisfied that the boundaries of subculture identity are as fluid, contradictory, and airborne as any, I walk out into the night, and it is oh so cold and dark in Chicago.