Installment#2
Casting as Life and Art
Yau John Yau as John Yau
 
John Yau plays himself, John Yau. He comes backstage to see his friend Mick. John is not a friend of Mick's, but he is a friend of mine, and since I am
Mick Jagger in The Anita Pallenberg Story, you get the idea.

John is a poet and an art critic and a sometime curator. Among other publications, he has written one of the most interesting books on Andy Warhol, In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol (Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 1993). He has published over seventeen books of fiction and poetry and I don't know how many artist monographs. Of his poetry and fiction works, one of my favorites is Hawaiian Cowboys (Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow, 1995). Of my art critic colleagues in New York, John is my personal and professional favorite.

I really can't remember when I first met him. I do know that twice, in unsavory art situations in the American provinces during the past decade, John has saved my ass. Once, at a symposium at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, John and I were on the same panel. Dave Hickey, who is the leading cowboy of white male colonialism on the art scene, was trying to kill me. Hickey was both the moderator and the organizer of the "Beauty"symposium; the only reason I was there was because some students and faculty found a way to bypass Hickey's control. Hickey didn't want me there: I'm the opposition. And it is so much easier to win an argument if you have no opposition! Anyway, it was like that. But Hickey had committed an error of judgment regarding John Yau. Hickey didn't predict and couldn't have conceived that John, who is so masculine (tee hee), could intellectually and politically side with me, a lesbian feminist. Hickey lives in Los Vegas, and I'm sure this kind of political alignment has never occurred there. So Hickey was angry, baffled and distraught when John and I won the day and the student audience by disagreeing with Hickey's reactionary aesthetics.

Then another time, John and I were guest critics together at the University of Texas at Austin. We gave separate lectures, and then together conducted seminars with the graduate students in fine art. During one of the discussions, a female student began questioning me about feminism. Within a few minutes, the discussion had degenerated into a room full of students, both male and female, asserting how important it is for women to be wives and mothers. This happens to me all the time. Or sometimes the female students just sit there and play with their hair while the male students ask questions. It is so boring: if these women just want to be wives and mothers, well, they don't need to go to art school or university to do that. Sometimes they even ask me about childcare, like I give a fuck. Obviously it is still quite a radical thought that women might do something with their lives other than care for men and children. So I was just sitting there in this big room in Austin, Texas, thinking: "Oh, no, here it goes again." And then John Yau said: "I can't believe Laura just gave a lecture about art and all you can ask her about is babies!"It was really funny. After John's comment, even the students realized how ridiculous they were being.

John Yau's scene in The Anita Pallenberg Story is based around another real-life John and Laura episode from a few years ago. John and I were on a train to Baltimore, where John was then teaching and I was invited to make a lecture. We hadn't seen each other for a while, so used the three-hour train ride to catch up. During this long conversation, John told me about what had happened at the Museum of Modern Art during the panel discussion for the "Dislocations" exhibition, which Rob Storr curated in 1992. It was Storr's first big curatorial feat for MoMA, and Storr was brought in as the 'progressive' at that institution. On the panel, John launched a critique against the Chris Burden installation, "The Other Viet Nam War Memorial", which MoMA had commissioned especially for the show. One of John's salient points concerned Burden's use of computer-generated names to (supposedly) commemorate Viet Nam's war dead. John pointed out that 'fake names' of the dead do not function as a gesture of respect or commemoration. Rob Storr, who was seated in the audience during the panel discussion, stood up and informed John Yau that the museum "had tried to get the right names", but that "the Vietnamese wouldn't give them to us."

Then John said: "Well, maybe that's because they don't belong to you!"

Rob Storr then left the auditorium.

This anecdote is a very loaded illustration of very real theoretical and ideological problems currently rampant in the fine art community. Why did Chris Burden think it was his place to produce the 'Other' Vietnam Memorial? Why did the Museum of Modern Art consider Burden's oversized metal greeting card, with it's list of 'fake names' deserving of cultural funding? How come Rob Storr doesn't understand that it is nonsensical, rude, and politically offensive to claim to 'commemorate' dead people - when you don't even know their names?

John's appearance allows us another significant time compression of the '60s with the '90s. His MoMA story took place in the 1990s and concerns a contemporary work of art that takes as it focus one of the most politically significant events of the 1960s: the brutal extermination of people in Viet Nam by the United States government. Given Chris Burden's gesture, and the institutional support it received, Americans obviously still have a lot to learn about their government's genocidal and imperialist practices.

Force Yvonne Force as a groupie
Jones? Where's Brian Jones ?
New York New York is the star of the film
Cottingham How I came to be Mick Jagger
von Bonin Cosima von Bonin as Anita Pallenberg
Eisenman Nicole Eisenman as Keith Richards
Brown Gavin Brown as Andrew Loog Oldham
Nanney Chuck Nanney as Kenneth Anger
Parrino Steven Parrino as Hell's Angel
Ganahl Rainer Ganahl as the Vogue Photographer
Amer Ghada Amer as a Rolling Stone Reporter
Theobald Stephanie Theobald as Julie Burchill
Cobett Aaron Cobett as Aaron, the Band's Make-Up Artist
Michael Lucas Michael as François de Menil
de Land Colin de Land as Robert Fraser
Dalrymple Clarissa Dalrymple as Tony Sanchez, the Band's Drugdealer
Beckwith Patterson Beckwith as David Bowie
Norton Peter Norton as the Pizza Delivery Boy