AoF.SP.METHODOLOGY
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posted 20 October 1997

Erika Chang
New York City, USA
email: [email protected]
web site: taliesin

(detail from the painting) . . . oil on canvas . . . 18" x 48"
©1991-1992 . . . ©1997 'Improved' for the Web :-b

If you thought the explanation for the other painting (untitled, unfinished icon) was esoterically convuluted enough, think again! If that was a mis-appropriation of Green and all that he stands for, this painting is my justification explained, not very clearly perhaps.

Yes, I sympathize. Really, it's just as confusing for me. The problem with painting is that its meaning doesn't have to be linear: Since all its parts are there simultaneously, it's hard to decide where to begin to explain. So, have your pick, begin with the extraneous background or go directly to the symbolism in the painting itself.

t h e . e x t r a n e o u s . b a c k g r o u n d

Before that year, 1991, I had embarked a program to figure Green out by taking classes in subjects he mentioned he studied or was interested in. In a way, I was trying to be like him, to trace his routes, in an effort to figure out the interviews and the lyrics.

The last of these efforts was finally to read a Derrida book, The Archeology of the Frivolous. Granted it's perhaps a non-standard Derrida book to read--the more popular being Of Grammatology and Writing and Differances--and maybe Green never read this book. But nonetheless I managed to extract a narrative with which to get some sort of a grip on the Green perspective, or the illusion thereof.

A catalyst and the turning point in the proccess is none other than the simultaneous release of Green's cover of She's A Woman. It was a meaningless choice on Green's part no doubt and a tautologically stupid phrase for him as he said. (If it's 'she' then it's of course a 'woman', in other words the phrase says nothing.) But in a different context, mine, it was a happy coincidence nonetheless and not at all tautological.

It was as if Green was pointing to me and sneering, 'Aha! you're a woman and you'll never understand what I'm saying, you can never be the same as me.' As I was trying to trace his route, I was also in denial about the differences which separates fans from the idol, followers from the leader, readers/listeners from the artist. And pointing to the gender, which is merely one of many such differences in my case, started the fissure.

What mattered in pointing to the gender is not so much that gender dictates one's identity--although it frequently shapes one's experience. Rather, what mattered the most here was the narratives or ways of thinking opened up by using the female gender metaphorically. So, it's a method that could be taken up by men and women alike and has little to do with taking sides in the traditional gender politics.

It's a different kind of 'feminism', which can perhaps help make sense of Green's esoteric political stance.

t h e . s y m b o l i s m . i n . t h e . p a i n t i n g

cdg

Comme des Garcon, the designer brand whose stained-glass dress inspired the one in the painting; but here also a play on the meaning of the name, like the boys, which was what I was trying to do before. This painting was about the turning point, so it's apt.

ps

plato and socrates from JD's The Post Card, which is also one of the panel on the dress, and here signify reversal and apocalypse. It's obviously also sp (scritti politti) reversed.

aof

JD's Archeology of the Frivolous obviously, the pivot. Also a panel on the dress standing for the actual process of reversal. It was when I started to stop trying to be a Green clone, to be like the boys, and started considering how my own situation affects the tracing and imitation.

sp

scritti politti. No explanation needed I think.

!

negation. So !cd g is the negation of like the boys.

psaofsp

reversal pivoting on aof.

cd

unix/dos command for changin directory, metaphor for my changing path.

g:/

you should know, since you work on PC. But could g:/ volume stand for Green? And having the reversal inside this volume for the fact that the seed of this digression was already in following Green, that that path has its own destruction/negation built in?