Sue de Beer first worked her magic on me
back in 2006, when the last line of her video
The Quickening stayed with me long
after its haunting images faded from the
screen: "Beauty lies in mystery... the beauty
is the mystery." For the installation, the
Marianne Boesky Gallery had been converted
into a comfy theater, complete with red
shag carpeting and bean bags - think 1970's
psychedelic lounge minus the hallucinogens.
Perhaps for this very reason, the heft of the
New York art scene had turned up for the
opening: Whitney curator Shamim Momin
could be spotted mingling with painter Barnaby
Furnas, while troublemaker Terrence
Koh reclined within earshot. Despite these
notable guests, the audience was transfixed
to the screen the moment those dream-like
visuals took shape, captivated by an unlikely
cast of actresses: Gina V. D'Orio and Annika
Trost of the band Cobra Killer. And so I
followed their lead, planting myself in the
middle of the Dr. Caligariesque arrangement
for some good old-fashioned movie
watching.
Unlike previous works exploring the dark
side of youth culture, The Quickening is set
in Puritan America. But the video continues
de Beer's long-standing interest in societal
mores, probing at the insidious ways
in which morality and religion slip into oppression
and misogyny - but without being
preachy. Pulling from various sources
(such as Jonathan Edward's "Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God" and music by
John Denver), the film documents our modern-
day heroines as they are hunted down
and killed. In the wake of these inexplicable
crimes, we're left with only a defiant enigma.
"It feels like there's something going on and
it is so hard to figure out precisely what it is,"
says de Beer. "Maybe you court the crime
so that you can at least know about it truly,
even though you won't know enough to be
able to stop it."
A native New Englander, de Beer frequented
punk and metal shows as a teenager
and admits that she was a bit of a troublemaker.
"I liked the physical aggression of
it all," she recalls. "I didn't weigh very much
so I liked the mosh pit because I seemed to
float to the top of it like paper." It's shocking
to learn that de Beer, despite her good-natured
and friendly demeanor, was also expelled
from high school. But all to a good
end: She started making art, ended up at
Parsons School of Design and then Columbia
University for her MFA.
Though de Beer did not make her first
video until graduate school ("simply because
I had never made a video before"), her uncanny
vision sets her apart. Making Out With
Myself, in which she used a plaster cast of
herself and then - you guessed it - passionately
kissed it, is very reminiscent of early
video's low-tech explorations. De Beer recalls
spending a lot of time in a Protestant church
as a child, an experience that ultimately influenced
her minimal design aesthetic and
somber color palette. However, this changed
radically in 2002 during the filming of Hans
und Grete in Berlin, when de Beer placed
a gel on a light and "felt like an asshole -
like New England had fucked my soul because
the color was so fucking beautiful."
Considering its reputation for being cold and
dreary, the city provides the backdrop for
many of de Beer's current collaborations, not
to mention an endless source of inspiration.
Her latest effort is shaping up to be quite
a departure. Permanent Revolution (2007),
for which she enlisted the help of artist, musician
and fellow Berlin transplant Gavin
Russom, is a contemplative video about
the implications of war and destruction.
Influenced by the structure of novels, the action
is divided into chapters with intermissions
for two large-headed, carnivalesque
characters who dance around a stage. In one
chapter, images of bombed buildings are
juxtaposed with Walter Gropius' text about
Bauhaus architecture. Interweaving history
and cultural production with the current
state of affairs, Permanent Revolution proves
a much more somber - some might even
say more mature - work for someone once
pegged as video art's dark darling.