Six Drops is deceptive. A spectral image haunts the
show. It is a show about showing, what happens in
a showing. The minimalist, white backdrop suggests
modern art's locus classicus - the white cube. The
artistic self is an extension of this institution.
The turbine hall of the Tate Modern. Itself a haunted
space, its past extinguished by the march of history,
it now receives the artist's blood and creates canonical
history in its own right. How then was this space
made? Six Drops is a fable about its making, a fable
that mobilizes mythology.
Blood and semen, life and manhood, are haunted by
a demand for sublimation. As they are shed, so is
the self sublimated, released from the prisonhouse
of destiny. For each drop shed signifies the release
from an emotion that binds, one that attaches the
self to the world. Captive of six internal enemies,
the self is ironically released in the letting go
of its vital fluids, its body and its vitality through
which these mythic enemies circulate. The self is
crafted in this process of letting go, of shedding
vitality, in an orgy of expenditure without return.
The self is a work of art.
The mythic ego lets go, releases an artistic self,
already sublimated. But this sublime process of letting
go, this act of self-realization only results in a
transference. In this monumental space, the artist
apparently gives into a demand for an authentic experience,
a self properly crafted. A defeat appears immanent,
meaning becomes metaphoric once again, captured by
an institutional process, located in mundane acts
of power. The ego’s freedom from destiny is
necessary. Yet, ironically, that freedom is made captive
once again, contributing to the extension of an institution.
The exhibit comes to life in the throes of a death.
Flowing bodily essences drain the ego of its enemies
and also craft the artistic self. The institution
is an extension of that self, purified but also rendered
virtual, beyond reach. Everything is artifice in the
realm of art but here is a virtual act, an artifice
that mocks-up the making and showing of the artificial.
In this show about showing, the virtual is what ensures
vitality. What permits its expressive power is the
artist’s gesture of putting the pain and ecstasy
that should accompany the loss of the body out of
reach. This artifice steers the viewer away from reality,
from the body and from pain as surely as it steers
one toward the artist’s supposed aspiration.
In this play between aspiration and artifice, desire
becomes elusive. The image punches a hole into the
wall of the real. Virtual shedding of blood and semen
renders the artifice of the artistic act and the reflections
of the artist’s ambition into self-reflexive
critique. If the exhibition requires artifice then
Six Drops is exhibition as artifice, playing on the
notion of setting something up. As a foray, the show
raises suspicion and skepticism about the virtual.
Six Drops is deceptive. Yet it is clear.
Vyjanthi Rao
New York, April, 2009
Vyjanthi Rao is Assistant Professor of Anthropology
and International Affairs at The New School, New York.
She works on cities after globalisation and her specific
interest lies in the intersections of urban planning,
design, art, memory and speculation in the articulation
of the conte
