In the first part of the video, the actor seems to be playing a wrongly accused victim who has been arrested by the police. For Ashery, he is what Giorgio Agamben calls Homo Sacer: a human being that exists outside the law as an exile who is stripped of any human rights. In Raging Balls, the meandering thoughts of the victim are combined with the re-enactment of a ‘stop and search’ scenario. The actor’s utter despair is very strong and his claims to unjust discrimination and loss of human rights appeals to a familiar concern over increased state control. This marks a general shift in current articulations of identity politics from notions of ‘Otherness’ to human rights. Or, to quote Jean Fisher, “What is at stake therefore is not respect for difference as such but respect for life, whatever the differences.”
The second part of the video – which is made apparent by a tentative move in the source of light that illuminates the actors face – is a continuation of the angry speech, but this time the subject of anger, combined with the frustration over the inability to feel real anger, is dedicated in a somewhat ‘schizophrenic’ manner to the current state of ‘political art’ or art’s dubious use of politics in a post-capitalist world.
Raging Balls can be understood as Ashery’s attempt to deliver a condensed seminar; a necessary protest; an individual in constant rage against the system; or lastly an artistic right to professional frustration. As noted by Giorgio Agamben in The Man Without Content, 1994; ‘Another notion that we encounter more and more frequently in artists’ opinions is that art is something fundamentally dangerous not only for those who produce it but for society as well.’ On the one hand, Ashery does not exist in the piece (except for a short while in the performance) , on the other hand she is far more present than usual because the piece evidently declares a personal and subjective positioning as a living contemporary artist. Ashery’s deliberate choice of low-tech means, the monochromatic setting, and the linear aesthetic economy of the video, alongside the live performance, recall intentionally canonical works such as those of Bruce Nauman. Raging Balls is underscored by a retro macho belligerence that suits today’s modern poser status. There is little sacred or clear in the tirade, in fact it is the very failure of these ideals that surround the work that act as a type of self-inflicted biographical collapse; or, as noted by Jennifer Doyle’s essay in her reference to Douglas Crimp’s text; ‘the self representation of our demoralisation”.’ It is more in the understanding of Ashery’s previous artworks and the socio-political convictions attached to identity politics that Raging Balls marks a transitory position from Ashery’s previous use of alter egos, to her current use of text delivered by the mediation of a ‘speech act’ by a real male protagonist. Ashery has chosen to work with the fe/male body not only to refer to the history of masculinity, femininity, patriarchy, masculine cultural identities and the ensuing historical associations of power and control, but also in deference to the everyday estrangement of conformity attached to these ideals.
While all of Ashery’s characters personify male identities of distinct cultural and social soundness, some also suggest an agency of hidden anger – anger that manifests itself in the liberation of macho-feminity disguised in the uniform of a male weakening. In harnessing and emasculating the male body, these almost ‘real men’ represent individuals exploring power and collapse while engaged in alternative forms of social reconstruction and cultural exchange. Ashery is in a sense ‘fooling around’ with mainstream associations. Her new works suggest a thematic shift from the early ‘more innocent’ desires attached to Marcus Fisher, to ones that have progressed and matured.
Dr. Stephen Wilson is an independent artist, writer and lecturer based in London.
Ashery is cunningly divisive in aptly naming her character Marcus Fisher with biological and metaphorical intrigue – ‘Mar-cus’ translates in Hebrew/Arabic as Mr. Cunt. Marcus Fisher extends to Boy Marcus and Young Marcus. Sarmad the Saint and Shabbtai Zvi (The Deerman – Zvi translates as ‘deer’ in Hebrew) are a recent addition of real historical figures used by Ashery as emblems of saintly performative transgressions. Also included are David Deliberate – an as yet undeveloped character that is centred on a displaced gender dysphoric mentality; The Fat Farmer (a character used for hair cutting in Central Location); The Greasy Instructor (see Shopping List for Live Art video); a black man and a white woman (see Colored Folk with Shaheen Merali); Sami Raah, an Arab man (Raah translates to ‘bad’ in Hebrew and ‘gone’ in Arabic) – see, Oh Jeruslaem and Portrait Sketch); and Masturbating Rabbit (see Occupation I, II – not in this book).
2 Ashery’s text was written for an evening of performances and films centred on the theme of protest, rebellion and revolt, titled A Staged Dissent: Life Is Interesting… When You’re Furious, at Loughborough University, 18 June 2008.
3See Giancarlo Ambrosino (ed.), David Wojnarowicz – A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side, Semiotext(e), 2006, p. 177. In reading several interviews on the life of David Wojnarowicz, a man who died of AIDS, I found myself moved by his extraordinary story. He led his life surrounded by immense intellectual dignity, involving considerable deaths and an inordinate amount of suffering and pain. The overwhelming significance of living and working as an artist is tough enough for most people, but to factor in the thought of one’s own proceeding death is altogether more consuming. Wojnarowicz, incredibly, managed the knowledge of his illness alongside the limited history available to him at the time of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s with amazing aptitude. An example of this is stated during an interview with Sylvere Lotringer (held in New York in April 1989) pertaining to a book by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross titled On Death and Dying. Lotringer discusses the book’s premise of five stages surrounding death, starting with denial, rage, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It is Wojnarowicz’s need to rearticulate preconceived sentiments connected to the notion of “courage” of friends he witnessed dying of AIDS that is of major significance. He refers to this later in terms of “rage” and concedes that when he was diagnosed with AIDS (this interview was held three months after his initial diagnosis), he felt betrayed by this supposed “courage” and more importantly “enraged” by it. Wojnarowicz and Lotringer both agree that the very “courage” that once meant something was in fact covering a deep silence, a world of politeness, or, as described by Wojnarowicz, “the more politely a person dies, the more courageous they are […] and everbody can live with it, rather than confront themselves with death, with rage, with all the expressions that somebody who’s not polite exhibits.”
4 Ibid., p. 178.
5 Chris McCormack is a writer/art critic/artist who performed in Raging Balls. He presented a live reading of the Raging Balls text in front of the projected video of his face; he did this after the instructed audience had thrown mashed paper balls at Ashery and her collaborator Owen Parry. McCormack was wearing grey shorts and a T-shirt as well as thin slip-on shoes that one might wear outdoors or indoors. He was clearly meant to look vulnerable portrayed like this amongst the audience and was dressed in this way to reference a key sentence noted within the text: “I will scrape my knees and I will fight, I will fight, you will have to drag me to the station, do you hear me? Five big guys in full armour will have to drag me, a white plucked chicken in shorts, to the station.”
6 Quote taken from Jean Fisher, Tales from the Dark Side (a monograph on Shaheen Merali), Double Agency, 2001. Fisher makes the valuable comment surrounding race and identity in an artwork by Ashery and co-creator Shaheen Merali entitled Colored Folk.
7 See Giorgio Agamben, The Man Without Content, Stanford University Press, 1999 (translated from the original 1994 text by Georgia Albert), p. 5.
8 In the performance Ashery is dressed in late 1960s attire, as the original work is based on the 1968 student riots in Paris. The artist can be seen protecting herself with art magazines such as Frieze and Artforum from an audience instructed to throw condensed paper balls “in a rage” at her and Owen Parry, a second performer.
9 See David Wojnarowicz – A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side, p. 228. Jennifer Doyle’s essay ‘A Thin Line’ (p.227-231) refers to Douglas Crimp’s book entitled “ De-Moralizing Representations of AIDS.” In Melancholia and Morlism Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics, Boston: MIT Press, 2004, p.267.