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Monument to Yesterday
single channel video, 7 min. 46 sec.
2008
courtesy of Christine Koenig Gallery Vienna
Monument to Yesterday shows a striptease number performed by a middle-aged common woman. The viewer is invited to read what is presented - an assemblage of an older woman on the background of an autumn wallpaper that can produce something more complex, troubling, and multilayered than an expected striptease scene. With amateurish clumsiness her performance undermines the very nature of this spectacle, its illusoriness and its potentiality to seduce.
Instead of a soundtrack, the striptease is accompanied by Futurist Manifesto of Lust, a vehement hymn to desire and lust, written in 1913 by the French poetess, writer, and performance artist Valentine de Saint-Point.
"Lust, conceived beyond moral preconceptions and as an essential element of the dynamism of life, is a force."
"Lust is not a sin. Like pride, lust is a virtue that urges one on, an epicentre at which energies are resourced."
"Lust is the expression of a being projected beyond itself."
"Lust is the carnal quest for the unknown."
"Lust is the act of creation and the creation as such."
"Flesh creates as spirit creates. Within the scope of the Universe, their creation is equal. One is not superior to the other, and spiritual creation is not independent from carnal creation."
"We must face lust with awareness. We must make of lust what a refined and intelligent person makes of himself and of his own life, we must make lust into a work of art."
"Lust is a Force."
(excerpts from Futurist Manifesto of Lust, 1913)
Futurist Manifesto of Lust was a highly controversial text which states that lust is a catalyst for creative energies and explores questions related to war, gender and art. It is an anticipation of a new field of artistic creation: "the art of flesh", "the art of lust" - "action feminine". This new artistic strategy - which was reversing the hegemony of spirit and mind - materialized in her performances called "metachories" (meaning "beyond the dance"). The metachories were solo performances combined with poems, mathematical formulas and were focused primarily on the body.
The form in which the manifesto is presented - as subtitles - evokes a narrator present and the tension between the text and the image creates a sort of "metachory". At the same time, the title addresses different notions of "yesterdayness": it is a monument to Valentine's oblivion, a monument to forgotten utopias and last but not least a monument to efemerity of body.
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