John Menick

This month, The Secret Life of Things is on view as part of “The Eyes of the Soul,” a group exhibition at la Fundación Godi, Barcelona. The exhibition is curated from the private collection of French video art collectors Jean-Conrad and Isabelle Lemaître.

[L-R] Author Clifford Irving, his wife Edith, artist Elmyr de Hory (seated, R, in sports jacket), Gerry Albertini and Bob Kirsh (R) (source).

I have a new work, a monologue called An Address Concerning My Supposed Existence, in the latest iteration of The Clifford Irving Show. The one-day show is happening on December 4th at Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp. For more information, read below or you can download this highly informative PDF.

The Clifford Irving Show
Saturday December 4, 2010
A full night event from 6 to 11pm.
RESERVATION IS REQUIRED – send an email to info@objectif-exhibitions.org
Food and drink will be served. Doors close at 6.45!

Thank you for coming. I will try to keep the rant and rave tucked in and the available facts as lined up as possible. The first story I have to tell is not exactly true, but it isn’t exactly false, either. It’s a story about literature leaving the line and entering the plane, painting leaving the plane and entering space, sculpture stepping into the fourth dimension and finally proposing a ‘completely new art form’. Call these forms a secession of tricksters who violate the boundaries to keep them alacritous and productive, who view the walls not as a fence but a perch. For nobody knows himself, if he is only himself and not also another one at the same time.

Last seen in Paris, The Clifford Irving Show stays true to its founding principles: life-writing, truth-bending, stage-celebrating. An acclaimed theater director David Levine will present theatrical adaptations of “Manhattan’s Serenade” and “Neighbor’s Wife” – two brand new screenplays by Clifford Irving, in a gallery that will act as a backdrop and a character of the play. Interspersed with acts and artefacts by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Marco Belfiore, Elise Berkvens, Pierre Bismuth, Goda Budvytyte, Celine Butaye, Audrey Cottin, Chris Evans, Mario Garcia Torres, Malak Helmy, Will Holder, Clifford Irving, Kevin Killian, Gabriel Lester, David Marcel Levine, Nicholas Matranga, John Menick, Elena Narbutaite, Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Michael Portnoy, Vivian Rehberg,Carson Salter, Aaron Schuster, Benjamin Seror, Snowden Snowden, Lauren von Gogh, Adva Zakai and more…

Curated by Raimundas Malasauskas

“Phantom Rosebuds”, an autobiography of Clifford Irving, as well as “The Autobiography of Any One Being Including Every One Before”, both designed by Dexter Sinister, will be available.

Still from Paris Syndrome, 2010.

As part of my show at the Carrillo Gil in Mexico City I’ll be giving a reading of some new texts this Friday, November 12 at 7:30pm at the museum. Please stop by.

Seventeenth century plan for a perpetual motion machine.

For a long time now I’ve wanted to see an exhibition devoted to discredited scientific theories. Most science museums focus on what science got right; I care more about what science got wrong. Ideally, this exhibition would include all kinds of missteps, failed experiments, and insane quackery; but most importantly, it would highlight theories scientists thought previously untouchable or unthinkable. (Lavoisier once disproved the existence of meteorites, despite the protests of witnesses.) What qualifies as a “scientific idea” is an open question, but I hope the exhibition would include Martian canals, Ptolemy’s astronomy, phrenology, hollow earth theory, and lots of alchemy.

It’s also hard to say what’s been completely disproven — Freudian unconscious? Extraterrestrial intelligence? — so I’ll leave those questions to my fictional curators who are infallible on these matters. However, if the exhibition proves impossible, and the curators resign in protest, I would gladly settle for a backup plan: a collection of alien portraits, in oils, watercolors and acrylics, painted by U.F.O. abductees. Which exhibition is less truthful, I don’t know.

I’m participating in a group show at Bitforms gallery opening Thursday, July 16, 6-8pm. I’m showing a new work, Subliminal Projection Company — part of a series of works dealing with brainwashing and subliminal messages. The show is curated by Mireille Bourgeois and Anaïs Lellouche also features Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Roee Rosen, Thomson & Craighead, and Brina Thurston. Hope you get a chance to see it.

I’ll be participating in Pecha Kucha Freestyle this Friday, July 10, 8 pm at the ISCP in Brooklyn. From the press release:

‘Pecha Kucha’ (chatter in Japanese), is an international social event initiated by architects who were tired of never-ending presentations by their verbose colleagues. It consists of a series of slide projections by the participants who also comment on the visuals. It has strict rules: one can present twenty slides for twenty seconds each, which allows everyone to speak and shine for no less and no more than 6 minutes and 40 seconds… On the occasion of Pecha Kucha Freestyle, participants – ISCP residents, and artists, curators and architects from NYC – were asked to present on anything that goes on in their minds; to share impulses, memories or obsessions that influence their work, to tell true stories, fiction, and lies, to impart theories and suspicions that inform their thinking process. You won’t see their artworks.. this playful format will certainly allow for a jam of eclectic source materials, quickly alternating between slapstick and serious, performative and poetic, found, archived and invented; giving you long-awaited translations of eighties Russian punk-rock, Sempé comics on NYC, the secret systems of bank vestibules, and animal presenters, mustaches and mullets… You will want more.

Address, full line-up, and more on the ISCP Web site.

I’m showing Hearsay in “A Series of Coincidences,” a group exhibition curated Regine Basha opening this Saturday (Feb 21) at Cabinet’s new exhibition space. Stop by if you get a chance. Details follow.

A Series of Coincidences
Sat, February 21, 6pm – 9pm
Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn (map)

FREE. No RSVP necessary.

Organized by Regine Basha

Featuring:

Serkan Ozkaya: Installation
Daniel Bozhkov: Object
John Menick: Video
Dario Robleto: Text

6-7 pm: conversation with Serkan Ozkaya and Daniel Bozhkov
7-9 pm: hobnobbing, conversation, and drinks

John Menick. Plot Points, 2009. Graphite on paper. 18″ x 24″.

“Paper Exhibition,” a group exhibition curated by Raimundas Malašauskas, is opening on January 15, 7 pm, at Artists Space (38 Greene Street). I have a couple of new works in the show — Hearsay and Plot Points. From the press release:

What does the line between reality and fiction look like? Can an exhibition be a life-sized paper model of itself? Whose name didn’t make the press release? And if it sounds good on paper, where is the paper? These enigmatic questions locate Paper Exhibition at the periphery of the known—between paper architecture and new pages of old books. The exhibition renders the open space of the gallery as a labyrinth of folds, holes and gaps through which an exchange between the literal and the literary can happen…

The exhibition includes works and performances, in order of disappearance, by: Julieta Aranda / Olivier Babin / Fia Backström / Judith Braun / Alex Cecchetti / Mariana Castillo Deball / Dexter Sinister / Gintaras Didziapetris / Jonah Freeman / Aurelien Froment / Dora Garcia / Mario Garcia Torres / Mark Geffriaud / Loris Gréaud / Morten Norbye Halvorsen / Will Holder / Pierre Leguillon / Gabriel Lester / Marcos Lutyens / Benoit Maire / Nicholas Matranga / John Menick / Melvin Moti / Trong Gia Nguyen / Job Piston / Pratchaya Phinthong / Conny Purtill / Adam Putnam / Amy Robinson / Joe Scanlan / Gareth Spor / Donelle Woolford / Joe Zane

I’ll be in Vilnius this weekend for the opening of my solo exhibition at Tulips & Roses. The show runs through October 30, 2008. I’m showing a selection of videos from the last six years or so, including two videos from Mirage Terminal – Dead Air and Let’s Throw the Furniture in the Fire — as well as Hearsay, The Secret Life of Things, and The Disappearance. I’ll be at the opening this Friday to give an artist’s talk. An interview with the gallery follows:

Tulips & Roses: It seems difficult to categorize your work. You make films which in one way or another use other films (or cinematography itself) as material. You seem to be an observer who turns into an intruder – someone who lives simultaneously on both sides of the screen. Or maybe you are a missing detective? Have you read J. L. Borges’ Death and the Compass?

John Menick: I’ll probably have a lot of trouble answering the Borges thing because I haven’t read his work in years. I don’t consider him to be much of an influence. (I like his work a lot, but there’s a difference between admiration and influence.) Then again, I feel he’s unavoidable for most artists and writers, and probably influenced everyone in a way, even soap opera writers and library designers. What’s said about him is true enough: he somehow prefigured our own condition. And he did it despite being someone who definitely did not hang on a cultural cutting edge. He was a lonely librarian in Buenos Aires and he seemed better at predicting cultural paradoxes than sci-fi writers with resumes from NASA. I’m not sure how he did that. I guess it shows that lots of reading can make up for a lack of experience. That probably sounds Borgesian too.

One thing that always struck me about Borges’ stories is how he was able to write stories as a reader. He’s the reader’s reader. He’s also strongest when writing in paraliterary forms, like essays or fake reviews or historical fragments. The videos I make aren’t about books per se, but films, cinephilia. My work, at least the videos, often begins from the standpoint of a certain kind of cinephilia. It’s film criticism by other means. That’s probably what you mean by an “observer that turns into an intruder.” Viewers, for me, aren’t passive receivers of information. They’re constantly transforming what they see into their own material. Even if we agree on that, the viewer-author relation is not easy to define. If it were, I would probably be doing something else.

(By the way, Borges was also a film reviewer for a while. He wrote a hilarious review of King Kong. He hated it. Find it if you can. He’s probably the only person I know of who hated King Kong.)

What is a McGuffin?

Here’s the literal and pedantic answer: the McGuffin is the object in the film everyone talks about and desires, but only really exists to get the action moving. “Secret documents” is a classic example from spy films. Hitchcock coined the term.

I think you’re asking about it because the missing man in The Disappearance is sort of a McGuffin, but I’m employing it to other ends in the video. Unlike a traditional narrative scriptwriter, I don’t have any need to move a plot forward. For me, the McGuffin is a productive distraction. I’m really good at distracting myself — I should be working on project A, but I end up doing project B as a way of avoiding project A. This seems to be a similar operation. Making meaning becomes a massive detour. I need that journey for whatever obscure reason.

Have you noticed the man who followed you the whole day a few days ago?

I wonder how surprised any of us would be to find out we’re being followed. Most of our online transactions are archived and data mined. Our credit histories, at least in the US, define us. Most major cities are blanketed with public and private security cameras. (Insert favorite near-totalitarian surveillance example here.) What’s interesting is that we feel fairly comfortable being watched. We’re willing to fork over a certain part of our lives for a certain amount of something, whether it’s security or free shipping. I don’t think that many people avoid using Google because Google tracks our searches. Credit cards aren’t going away either. So why not be followed for a whole day? It’s a lot more personal than data mining. It’s almost flattering.

Do you have to break a watch to experience time?

I stopped wearing a watch about ten years ago. I forgot when it was exactly, but I remember why: I found I was looking at my watch on the subway and worrying about when I was going to get to my destination. It was absurd. I couldn’t move any faster than the train, and if I’m late, I’m late. So what do I need the watch for? It’s just a terrible anxiety machine. So I threw it out. I worked in an office then so I sat in front of at least two or three clocks. At home I had several clocks too. You can’t get away from them. Why strap one to your arm?

The funny part is I’m incredibly punctual – even without a watch. I don’t think watches and clocks have anything to do with an experience of time. They’re training devices. Wear one long enough and it still makes itself known. I’m afraid it takes a lot more than breaking one to kill the terrible master.

I was trying to do some research about the supposed fact that Nietzsche was using a typewriter for his last writings. Apparently, his sister bought him a Malling-Hansen Writing ball typewriter in 1882. He used this peculiar machine (which resembles human brain to me) with his eyes shut, because of his near blindness. He was never completely satisfied with it though – nobody knows why. Maybe it was the fact that this machine could only type in uppercase, maybe it was the uncomfortable architecture of it. Supposedly there is also a letter in which Nietzsche wrote to a friend: “Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts”. I wonder if he wrote this by hand. The downside of all of this is that I am not sure now what my question for you is…

I like the Nietzsche factoid in Hearsay because some writers seem like longhand writers (Dickens, Proust), and others seem solid keyboard writers (Burroughs, Gaddis). It’s an idiotic game because it’s nearly impossible to divide up writers this way, but I don’t think anyone would think of Nietzsche as pounding out pages on a typewriter.

Like just about all of us, I write on a computer. I rarely write longhand. My handwriting is horrible. Every so often I think about working on my handwriting – sort of like going back to grade school. I’ve heard about people that willfully change their handwriting. They just decide one day to change they way they write. Or maybe they switch hands: go from being a lefty to a righty. People like that fascinate me. I wish I could do it. I think these people who change their handwriting believe it will change their thinking and therefore it will change them on a deeper level. Kind of like the belief that smiling will make you happy or those criminologists who thought they could identify a person through their handwriting. Handwriting seems to be a dying form of technology, actually. It doesn’t seem that useful anymore except for making lists and writing checks.

As some of you who follow these things might know, the conceptual artist Michael Asher has been doing an ongoing project for the public art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Münster, in which he parks a trailer at various sites in the city. Asher started the project in 1977 for the first Projekte Münster, and he has repeated it for every iteration of the shown since. It’s been 30 years now, so the city has changed, but not the trailer. Here it is today, looking a little out of era:

Anyway, I don’t know what the carjacking rates are for Münster, but according to a blurb in ArtForum, the said trailer was stolen. Or, as ArtForum writes, the trailer “disappeared without a trace.” A short while later:

Police reported that the trailer had turned up in the town of Telgte, Germany, approximately six miles from Münster. An initial inspection found no damage to the work, which is an original. The trailer will undergo another inspection before being reinstalled in the exhibition.

A statistical fluke? Münster’s yearly carjacking strikes a conceptual artwork? Or something more ingenious, a meta-conceptual art heist pulled off by some disaffected German art students? Stay tuned…