ROCK MY RELIGION /// SCREENING OF DAN GRAHAM’S SEMINAL VIDEO ESSAY
FREE /// 8:00pm /// May 1st 2011 /// MONUMENT2 /// 2007 N. POINT ST.
Rock My Religion
Dan Graham
1982-84, 55:27
b&w and color, sound
From the Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) catalogue:
Rock My Religion is a provocative thesis on the relation between religion and rock music in contemporary culture. Graham formulates a history that begins with the Shakers, an early religious community who practiced self-denial and ecstatic trance dances. With the “reeling and rocking” of religious revivals as his point of departure, Graham analyzes the emergence of rock music as religion with the teenage consumer in the isolated suburban milieu of the 1950s, locating rock’s sexual and ideological context in post-World War II America. The music and philosophies of Patti Smith, who made explicit the trope that rock is religion, are his focus. This complex collage of text, film footage and performance forms a compelling theoretical essay on the ideological codes and historical contexts that inform the cultural phenomenon of rock `n’ roll music.
Original Music: Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth. Sound: Ian Murray, Wharton Tiers. Narrators: Johanna Cypis, Dan Graham. Editors: Matt Danowski, Derek Graham, Ian Murray, Tony Oursler. Produced by Dan Graham and the Moderna Museet.
Dan Graham (Born 1942 in Urbana, Illinois USA). Graham was owner of a gallery, art and culture theorist, photographer, film producer, performance and installation artist. A pioneer in performance and video art in the 1970’s,Graham later turned his attention to architectural projects designed for social interaction in public spaces. Furthermore, writing has been an essential aspect of Graham’s work. His texts range from early conceptual art pieces inserted in mass-market magazines, to writings on his fellow artists, to analyses of popular culture. Graham lives and works in New York City (USA).
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If one is to watch, read, or inhabit Dan Graham’s artwork it is clear he has an interest (an obsession?) in examining and deconstructing various relationships between the viewer and the spaces s/he occupies. Whether reimagining the architecture of the cinema; designing cozy cubicles for viewing videos in museums; exploring the disorientation of simultaneous yet separate perspectives; or using two-way mirrors to construct gallery installations and public pavilions.
MONUMENT2’s presentation of Rock My Religion is a continuation of Graham’s exploration of this subject. Situated within the somewhat ambiguous position occupied by the apartment gallery’s public/private hybrid, MONUMENT2 provides both the architecture and opportunity to present an important work of art that has the potential to fall into the “obscurity” attached to inaccessibility.
Recently, Rock My Religion was removed from ubu.com, which is arguably the largest, most focused, and easily accessible source for experimental, underground, avant-garde, rare, and hard to find film and video art (on the web). While excerpts of Rock My Religion remain online, full-length versions are harder to find; circulating within torrent communities, or for rent from a distributor.
In response to these prohibitive conditions (and also as a preamble to Patti Smith’s commencement address at SAIC this month) I will be screening my dusty VHS copy of Rock My Religion. This tape is probably a copy of a copy whose image quality has eroded with each new generation in it’s illicit dub-lifecycle. However, this degeneration might be seen as liberating. Each copy is unique in its degradation. During this process, loss of quality imbues the copy with an aura that gets woven into the video’s grainy texture. Viewing this imperfect copy might be likened to hearing a musician’s mistakes during a performance. It demonstrates how imperfection works to reaffirm the authenticity, honesty, and excitement of an experience.
This cinematic congregation is an opportunity to use my access to these poor copies (to use Hito Steyerl’s term) in a way that is constructive. Curating from my personal collection, I’m taking on the role of an altruistic distributor working in good faith and pro bono. Sharing this bootleg in a collective viewing environment reaffirms the importance of (local) community, asserting that what we might call narrowcasting still plays an important role in today’s broadband culture.
Do not mistake punk-rock ethos for a disrespectful act of defiance. As Graham has suggested himself, it is important to reevaluate the established structures that we tacitly occupy. For this reason it seems especially apropos to use his work to question the effects of both established and emerging modes of viewing art, and consider their complexities as they continue to coexist, creating a real-world feedback loop.
– Eric Fleischauer
Eric Fleischauer is a Chicago-based artist, curator, and educator. Utilizing various strategies such as repurposing discarded VHS tapes as sculptural material, making imperfect drawings of computer generated CAPTCHA’s, or curating videos from YouTube and presenting them in the cinema, his work examines the ramifications of technology’s expansive influence on both the individual and cultural sphere. He currently teaches in the department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
