Some readers may not know of Andrew J. Paterson, which is a darned shame. His recent Pleasuredome video and performance night rocked the house. It was a live-action retrospective, in which Andy interspersed and overlapped seven live monologues (seven! with costume changes!) with video and super 8 film, dating from the early 80s to current works in progress.
Andy Paterson abhors the oversimplification of polarities, and the term "false binarism" is a favourite of his. Yet duality is a big feature in much of his work. A cultural bureaucrat named "A" discusses anarchy and other matters over the telephone with an identical cultural bureaucrat named "B" (both played by Andy, of course). Their argument is circular, but the circle doesn't close. By presenting two positions, Andy opens up the territory for many (maybe infinite?) points of view.
The cultural bureaucrats:
B: How can you honestly believe that anarchy is capitalism? How many anarchists do you know, on a conversational level?
A: Enough. Look, B, since capitalists would prefer that government play as minimal a role as possible with regards to private or "free" enterprise, and anarchists advocate the elimination of government, then anarchy would seem to be the ultimate extension of the free market principle.
B: If there's no government there can be no government regulation of free trade, right?
A: Precisely, B.
B: But the anarchists I know are socialists. They advocate the breakup of large nations into smaller intelligible and accountable units.
A: That's not anarchy, that's democracy!
B: But they don't believe in elections ..."
The cop:
"My job is to weed out illegal or underground economies, not only to stop them in process but also to prevent them from even being imagined. I am on duty to keep incompatible languages apart from one another. You cannot have incompatible languages competing for public space ..."
The driver:
"Here in my car
we won't get very far
because I cannot drive
and neither can you
so there ..."
(sung to the tune of Gary Numan's "Cars")
Andy Paterson's mind is complicated and sometimes hard to follow, but the man is a generous and charismatic entertainer, and the door to his ideas is pretty wide open. Summing up Andy's stories does them no justice, because it's their very layered interconnectedness that gives them clout. Pay attention, and you'll find yourself firing neurons you never knew you had. That said, I will try to name a few themes: exchange and commodity, public space, media and language, class and mobility, oppression, censorship, bad puns, mental illness, more bad puns, music, art, math, and history.
For a recent online project by Andrew J. Paterson click here.
For videos and information look at VTape's excellent catalogue.
You are so full of shit!
I mean "welcome, you got mail."
Can you hear me now?
looks great.
signed "annonymous"
Thanks, Joe. you misspelled anonymous
Who is this Joe person, he sounds cool?
(signed: anonymous)
hi sall, i like this review of andy. hey, btw, is jack black
canadian?
you'd think so, wouldn't you? apparently he was born in California. Maybe he will be president someday.
I know it says keep it short, but I thought I'd horn in on your blog with an email I wrote about Andy's show to friends who couldn't makt it cuz they're on the west coast... the subject was "should'a been there"... v. nice blog, by the way...
xo paul
----------------
nov 15
tonight was andy patersons's video/super 8 retro with pleasure dome at the latvian house (complete with a series of 'live' bits, monologues with super 8 on the side that waxed on about privatization, publicization, globalization, and anticipation while reprising some of his favourite power roles -- priests, cops and rock stars...).
it was a surprisingly thoughtful program, weaving through his work of the 80s and 90s, showing mostly shorter pieces and quite a few excerpts from the longer works -- mostly andy talking and singing -- but snatches of other stuff, like Margaret, or Paul Wong and such for comic relief. andy's always been something of the straight man, so he serves up tastier when there's the occasional comic foil.
the super 8 bits were quite delightful, especially when projected simultaneously with a digitized version of the same footage, their speeds slightly different because of the frame count , so that they would start out of synch, slip into synch, and then switch so that the video was lagging after starting out ahead.
the evening had such a nice feel. quite an intelligent package.
with andy i always have the sense i'm being pushed or pulled just a bit faster than normal speed, trying to keep up with the references and figure out where he's going with a train of thought, so i was a little worried that a whole evening of him would leave me worn out. instead, it all started to come into focus and make sense, the bad sound and text that doesn't linger long enough on the screen for me to be able to read it melding into a more-than-tolerable, perhaps even meaningful, aesthetic.
and i began to really groove on the way the early fascination with public and private image morphed into thoughts on public and private space, with economics providing the bridge between psychoanalysis and social geography. i never would've thought of linking them that way myself. it almost made me want to put together a lounge act and call it performance art, but that's another story...
i felt like i was getting a unique and totally authentic take of those two decades, definitely witnessing a scene, pleasingly contradictory for being two things at the same time:
A) a time and place that only ever existed in one man's mind; and
B) a series of familiar references that touched all the high (and low) points of the period
A and B, like his two characters battling out questions of capitalism, anarchy and social (dis)placement.
It was kind of like a flaneur's diary, especially with all the super 8 street scenes of familiar toronto walkways. a whole world, a parallel universe that references what i know, but seen through filter that i've only caught the vaguest glimmers of in my everyday lived experience. an evening of it left me with a pretty forceful impression of what it would be like to see that way all the time...
the hardest part was seeing michael balser appear on or behind the screen so frequently, knowing that he's gone and missing him. and there was also a special poignancy to the 'resignation' sequence between A and B, where they bemoan how they've been painted into a corner by their career choices (cultural bureaucrat and teacher) -- at the end you can almost taste the bitter sting of pathos, not at all like the overstatement (vaudeville and melodrama) i usually associate with andy. because i've always thought that the quality that serves him best is that joy he takes in being in on the joke with the audience, like he knows as well as we do just how ridiculous the wigs and costumes are, but who cares as long as we're all having fun and scoring some intellectual brownie points on the side? not quite as nihilistic as peggy lee singing 'is that all there is' but not so naive and guileless as las vegan elvis, either.
anyways, i thought how much fun both of you would have had if you were there tonight, so i was holding you in spirit with me as i sat and enjoyed and was just very impressed by it all. ...
Hey Paul great post! Thanks for sharing your email here, its so nice to have more detail on that fun andy-evening.
|
Some readers may not know of Andrew J. Paterson, which is a darned shame. His recent Pleasuredome video and performance night rocked the house. It was a live-action retrospective, in which Andy interspersed and overlapped seven live monologues (seven! with costume changes!) with video and super 8 film, dating from the early 80s to current works in progress.
Andy Paterson abhors the oversimplification of polarities, and the term "false binarism" is a favourite of his. Yet duality is a big feature in much of his work. A cultural bureaucrat named "A" discusses anarchy and other matters over the telephone with an identical cultural bureaucrat named "B" (both played by Andy, of course). Their argument is circular, but the circle doesn't close. By presenting two positions, Andy opens up the territory for many (maybe infinite?) points of view. Andy Paterson's mind is complicated and sometimes hard to follow, but the man is a generous and charismatic entertainer, and the door to his ideas is pretty wide open. Summing up Andy's stories does them no justice, because it's their very layered interconnectedness that gives them clout. Pay attention, and you'll find yourself firing neurons you never knew you had. That said, I will try to name a few themes: exchange and commodity, public space, media and language, class and mobility, oppression, censorship, bad puns, mental illness, more bad puns, music, art, math, and history.
For a recent online project by Andrew J. Paterson click here.
For videos and information look at VTape's excellent catalogue.
- sally mckay 11-19-2003 2:27 am
You are so full of shit!
I mean "welcome, you got mail."
Can you hear me now?
looks great.
signed "annonymous"
- Joester (guest) 11-19-2003 9:47 am
Thanks, Joe. you misspelled anonymous
- sally mckay 11-19-2003 9:49 am
Who is this Joe person, he sounds cool?
(signed: anonymous)
- Joester (guest) 11-19-2003 9:57 am
hi sall, i like this review of andy. hey, btw, is jack black
canadian?
- anonymous (guest) 11-19-2003 4:48 pm
you'd think so, wouldn't you? apparently he was born in California. Maybe he will be president someday.
- sally mckay 11-19-2003 6:46 pm
I know it says keep it short, but I thought I'd horn in on your blog with an email I wrote about Andy's show to friends who couldn't makt it cuz they're on the west coast... the subject was "should'a been there"... v. nice blog, by the way...
xo paul
----------------
nov 15
tonight was andy patersons's video/super 8 retro with pleasure dome at the latvian house (complete with a series of 'live' bits, monologues with super 8 on the side that waxed on about privatization, publicization, globalization, and anticipation while reprising some of his favourite power roles -- priests, cops and rock stars...).
it was a surprisingly thoughtful program, weaving through his work of the 80s and 90s, showing mostly shorter pieces and quite a few excerpts from the longer works -- mostly andy talking and singing -- but snatches of other stuff, like Margaret, or Paul Wong and such for comic relief. andy's always been something of the straight man, so he serves up tastier when there's the occasional comic foil.
the super 8 bits were quite delightful, especially when projected simultaneously with a digitized version of the same footage, their speeds slightly different because of the frame count , so that they would start out of synch, slip into synch, and then switch so that the video was lagging after starting out ahead.
the evening had such a nice feel. quite an intelligent package.
with andy i always have the sense i'm being pushed or pulled just a bit faster than normal speed, trying to keep up with the references and figure out where he's going with a train of thought, so i was a little worried that a whole evening of him would leave me worn out. instead, it all started to come into focus and make sense, the bad sound and text that doesn't linger long enough on the screen for me to be able to read it melding into a more-than-tolerable, perhaps even meaningful, aesthetic.
and i began to really groove on the way the early fascination with public and private image morphed into thoughts on public and private space, with economics providing the bridge between psychoanalysis and social geography. i never would've thought of linking them that way myself. it almost made me want to put together a lounge act and call it performance art, but that's another story...
i felt like i was getting a unique and totally authentic take of those two decades, definitely witnessing a scene, pleasingly contradictory for being two things at the same time:
A) a time and place that only ever existed in one man's mind; and
B) a series of familiar references that touched all the high (and low) points of the period
A and B, like his two characters battling out questions of capitalism, anarchy and social (dis)placement.
It was kind of like a flaneur's diary, especially with all the super 8 street scenes of familiar toronto walkways. a whole world, a parallel universe that references what i know, but seen through filter that i've only caught the vaguest glimmers of in my everyday lived experience. an evening of it left me with a pretty forceful impression of what it would be like to see that way all the time...
the hardest part was seeing michael balser appear on or behind the screen so frequently, knowing that he's gone and missing him. and there was also a special poignancy to the 'resignation' sequence between A and B, where they bemoan how they've been painted into a corner by their career choices (cultural bureaucrat and teacher) -- at the end you can almost taste the bitter sting of pathos, not at all like the overstatement (vaudeville and melodrama) i usually associate with andy. because i've always thought that the quality that serves him best is that joy he takes in being in on the joke with the audience, like he knows as well as we do just how ridiculous the wigs and costumes are, but who cares as long as we're all having fun and scoring some intellectual brownie points on the side? not quite as nihilistic as peggy lee singing 'is that all there is' but not so naive and guileless as las vegan elvis, either.
anyways, i thought how much fun both of you would have had if you were there tonight, so i was holding you in spirit with me as i sat and enjoyed and was just very impressed by it all. ...
- Paul Couillard (guest) 11-23-2003 8:08 pm
Hey Paul great post! Thanks for sharing your email here, its so nice to have more detail on that fun andy-evening.
- sally mckay 11-24-2003 9:40 pm