Studio Visit
Yun-Fei Jiâs Classicism Documents Chinaâs Modernization
by Mel Watkin

Fischerspoonerâs Infiltration of Pop

January 2002. I just wrote this in a letter to someone÷a comment in regards to a recording contract:

The whole idea behind FS was to make something accessible and popular. Not indie! I still want to disrupt the pop system. I mean, I openly fucking lip-synch, and these people who weâre working with are trying to make it mainstream÷if that can happen, there is hope! Iâm getting old and I would rather take a big crazy risk than slowly slink up the entertainment ladder, when the truth is I donât give a damn about the music business. It was not my lifelong dream. I can always retreat to my holier-than-thou avant-garde shelter of excuses once I have failed grandly. And, I want it to be a GRAND failure. I need to think about why I love this idea÷why everyone is fascinated by failure. And, why is it such a constant, thrilling theme throughout history?

Crazy. I guess I was describing why or how I can be so cavalier regarding ãreal entertainment.ä

Iâm just freaking out at how insane all of this becomes each day. For instance, I think I just agreed to fly to Miami to meet with all of the presidents of BMG worldwide. I feel like an imposter! I canât believe the charade works all the way to this level!

Iâm actually nervous, because this really is the performance of a lifetime. I am performing the image of a burgeoning pop icon! I think I will just keep writing and describing what is happening and how I feel and together we will find the truth of the process.1

Roe Ethridge/FS Studios, Casey Spooner, 2002 (courtesy Deitch Projects, New York City).

Fischerspooner is a smart bomb÷Guy Debordâs unsatisfied soul injected into the teenybopper-friendly, middle-American trinity of Best Buy, MTV and Internet file sharing. It is an experiment in overexposure÷an end game of sorts for popular entertainment perpetrated by an army of actors, dancers, photographers, stylists, designers, musicians and publicists. If youâve ever wondered what would happen if, one day, the editors of Rolling Stone, Artforum and Vogue joined forces, like samurai in a Kurosawa film, and decided to replace the stars with themselves, take notice. A Frankenstein is afoot, an overdue deconstruction of hype and fame born out of just such a takeover bid.

Until this year, experiencing Fischerspooner in print has been a distant business, especially for those of us outside New York. In lieu of the real thing, media accounts of the groupâs pomp and pageantry often felt one step removed, or filtered... a bit like poetry appreciated through Morse code. This filtering isnât necessarily bad. For years, such interpretive gaps have lent themselves to the process of celebrity building on itself. Try Google searching someone ãfamous for being famous.ä Download their résumé and cross-reference a few bibliographical sources. If coattails exist, critics ride and hide them here. More often than not, the process of ãcreating and maintaining buzzä is a snowball effect, with hearsay as precedent for fact. And in the industries of art and entertainment, nothing incites an editorial like the second or third-hand reception of an experience.

If show business has one cynical precept, it is that gossip breeds exoticism, but success usually depends on a reliable model. Now, if this ãruleä is meant to be unexpressed, like an implied moral standard, and always eclipsed by the spectacle in question, then Fischerspooner are troublemakers from hell. Their performances offer up the ultimate transgression against entertainment÷formal familiarity, honesty regarding to process, and contempt for politesse. On stage, on record, in interviews÷everywhere, they joyously expose the ins-and-outs and the ease with which itâs done. Operative word: ãit.ä Meaning ãthe process of becoming famous.ä If this is beginning to smell of teen spirit, it probably should; except... well, try to imagine Nirvana as Duran Duran, now, and without the irony. They project an opportunism that could only be called ãBrechtianä÷after Fischerspooner, it is hard to imagine the fourth wall of a Britney Spears concert (or career, for that matter) reading in quite the same way... at least, from the vantage point of a Carson Daly demographic. They offer up an infectious brand of integrity that can only come with having nothing to lose. Except that they do! Ask gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, who has funded the groupâs appearances to the tune of $500,000 a show, or James Palumbo, the Berry Gordy of Britainâs electronic music scene, whose label Ministry of Sound shelled out over two million dollars last year for multimedia distribution rights overseas. The patronage is growing. What was once an excuse for ãhomemade social intervention and boho community outreachä has expanded to the world stage from the safety net of the New York art world in the course of five years.2

Fischerspooner, Performance at Deitch Projects, New York City, May 2002. (courtesy Claudia Brown/Glamour Pimple, NYC).

The turning point came on the heels of a run of performances at Gavin Brownâs Enterprise in the spring of 2000. In one season, the group became Village Voice-endorsed Chelsea darlings. They were the subjects of ravings in several art magazines and European music publications, whose verbatim pull quotes now wrap (quite literally) their 2003 debut release on Capitol Records. The vast majority of ã#1ä was recorded four years ago as a piecemeal collection of stark hyper-processed electropop. Compiled as the tracks were performed across Manhattanâs hipster circuit, it circulated amongst those in the know. Open up the remastered version today and youâll see an appropriation of hype so conspicuous and unapologetic that even Michael Jackson would blush. Typeset on the CD itself, lines from the UKâs New Music Express (ãthe best thing to happen to music since electricityä) sandwich those from Flash Art and The Face (ãcultural phenomenon!ä). Opposite this, serving as an inlay, is a photograph of frontman Casey Spooner, standing on a desolate, freshly fogged stage, spotlit, screaming and wet with sweat. Jeremiah Clancy, Spoonerâs onstage foil, crouches behind him, modeling this springâs tour t-shirt of choice÷a white Hanes number emblazoned with the text, ãArtists Have More Fun.ä You get the idea.

The package is almost perfect for todayâs herd of independent minds. Given our cultureâs tendency to preface most sincere display with a knowledge of ãknowing better,ä perhaps Fischerspooner were only a matter of time. Their performances brim with sarcasm, second guessing and soliloquy. Cigarettes are lit and dragged over prompts to lip-synch. Arena rock production values are squeezed into gallery-sized spaces and given the same credence in front of an audience that a teenager would give himself during a private bedroom Metallica mime-fest. Whim is everything. Glitter cannons, wind machines, pyrotechnics and costume changes are often timed by audience intervention or Spoonerâs fickle dissatisfaction. His vocals, at least those that are sung, are never live. Warren Fischer, co-founder and sole composer of the groupâs musical output, sees to that by dutifully pressing ãplayä and ãpauseä on a backstage compact disc player, as Spooner instructs him from the stage. Every tried and true trope of entertainment is laid bare, on the table, appropriated and exhausted. Nothing is new. The shock is that nothing feels stale. A transcript of a Fischerspooner show might read like a Janeane Garofalo monologue given to the judges of FOXâs American Idol. It is comedy, on paper÷deconstructive satire at best. And that is unfortunate, because behind every knowing wink, blatant stumble and misstep, there is an almost impossible earnestness÷a surrender to spectacle that seems to achieve a kind of sublimity when experienced as the sum of its parts. It is more punk than farce, its ideas more indebted to the DIY ethos of situationism than to Sandra Bernhardâs brusqueness. And therein lies the potential for misreading responsible for many criticsâ knee-jerk comparisons of Fischerspooner to camp. Weimar decadence is there, but processed through the irony-free lens of a Bollywood musical. Society of the Spectacle meets Solid Gold. Seriously.

October 2002.

Iâve always dreamed of something that would exist in two disparate realms, simultaneously. Something riddled with dualities. Real and artificial. Sometimes it is really difficult for me to remember what my initial intentions were with FS after such a web of changes... itâs inherently a slippery slope. One that is continually evolving.

Talked to Kylie [Minogue] today about our [Top of the Pops] UK TV appearance on the 31st. Freaky Deaky. She loves Warrenâs mix [of ãCome Into My Worldä] so much that she wants to perform it instead of the original and with FS!!! Iâm really trying to figure out how to do this one right. So much to tell! Get this though... I told her that we were going to dress up like fruit, that it was going to be about the ãharvestä and pagan ritual. A return to the seasons... kind of like the Fruit of the Loom guys. She was like... ãuhhhhhh.ä

And then I said I was teasing and that we were doing ãNu Hollywood.ä Now, but chic. Basically, I am helping her and her team to knock us off. I love the idea of giving them ideas that we are done with. It is all borrowing from our L.A. shows and the ãSweetnessä film. Which is nice because it will only bring a larger audience to this body of work that is complete.

Iâm really dancing with the devil now, but Iâm not scared. The only way to exorcize a demon is to confront it. 3

Fischerspooner, Performance at Deitch Projects, New York City, May 2002. (courtesy Claudia Brown/Glamour Pimple, NYC).

To say that Fischerspooner have found a new way of ãkeeping it realä for people who hate ãkeeping it realä comes as close as anything in describing the groupâs dichotomous approach. But it also raises several larger questions about our culture. For starters, what does ãrealityä mean when governed by entertainment media? Why do we so often associate our collective notions of ãauthentic experienceä with the absence of ãproduction valuesä? And where did the recent slew of ãreality televisionä come from? The answer begins with an orthodoxy of speech that exists in modern marketing÷a sameness caused by designersâ access to increasingly similar resources. In other words, everyoneâs sharing the same toolkit and it shows. The immediacies of ãcut-and-pasteä construction and PowerPoint-style delivery have created formal interchangeability in presentation and packaging. Surf the net, read a magazine and watch TV all at once, and see. An MTV News blurb about Madonna shares the same sexy veneer of rounded translucent neon as... an Internet pop-up window, a Revlon ad, an Ikea chair or a Karim Rashid rug. The contrast between shows such as Cops, Jackass and Survivor and their intermittent commercial breaks serves to jar viewers from one version of ãrealityä to another. Fischerspooner might argue that the ãtruest realityä lies in an active grasp of this schizophrenic mediation. In fact, if the group took this philosophy to its most nihilistic end and formed a Fight Club, Roe Ethridge÷arguably the groupâs most important silent collaborator÷would be its first member. 4

Ethridge made a name for himself a couple of years ago with a grisly head shot of indie rocker Andrew W.K. In the widely-publicized image, reproduced on the cover of W.K.âs album I Get Wet, a massive nosebleed cascades down the musicianâs face and neck. The bloodâs plausibility notwithstanding, its effect was an intrusion of reality, similar to one that would surface the following year in Ethridgeâs Untitled (Self-portrait)÷a C-print depicting the photographerâs own preppy face marred by an almost perfect black eye. Unbeknownst to viewers, the injury was acquired during a climbing accident. ãThe bruise was actual, but looked fake,ä the artist says. ãThe colors looked too vivid to be real. As a society, I think weâre skeptical of things that look too artificial or created; and maybe thatâs what made me want to make a record of this experience. In a perverse way, it felt like something too good to be true.ä5 In both cases, Ethridgeâs works serve as total interruptions given the larger context of their reception. I Get Wetâs cover is still blacked out across America at every mall shop and Wal-Mart; and the photographerâs black eye (in addition to being a perfect double entendre) has broken the flow in notable photography group shows for over a year now÷its ambiguous origins leaving the audience queasy and the artist morally questionable.

Roe Ethridge/FS Studios, Casey Spooner, 2003 (courtesy Deitch Projects, New York City).

Ethridgeâs chief strength lies not in shock but in his portrayal of truths that read as staged÷a sensibility that melds perfectly with FSâs raison dâêtre. In an ongoing suite of portraits done in conjunction with the groupâs make-up and costuming team, the photographer runs Spooner through a battery of frontal set-ups that reveal, at once, Spoonerâs total sense of individuality and his slavish service to historical archetypes in art and fashion. The Hefner-esque lounge lizard, boy next door, pasty-faced glitter-goth, Van Halen-era hair farmer, and Bollywood-style sheik÷all surface in fresh, updated ways. They read as stiff portrayals or character studies, but document something much deeper and more personal. They are soulful in the same way as a childâs dream. Oscar Wildeâs famous axiom that ãmen, given masks, will tell you the truthä speaks to the heart of this work. As does his historic double reading of earnestness. The dandy is least himself when made to speak in his own person, and is often most innocent inside his satire.6

Fischerspooner, Performance at Deitch Projects, New York City, May 2002. (courtesy Claudia Brown/Glamour Pimple, NYC).

December 2002.

Just got back from Miami (and a privately commissioned performance at the home of [contemporary art collector] George Lindemann). Sleeping and eating are overrated. I partied to the break of dawn almost every night, drank tequila and felt like a real cult hero. Bands of adoring youths hosting me about town in the wee hours. All Cuban, cute and hipster. It was real. Really real. It also renewed my love for all the people I work with. Everyone was pushed to the max. No hissy fits, no idiocy. All of us barely fed or given water! I am so thankful for these people.

Weâre leaving on a secret night club tour of Cologne, Rome and Frankfurt next week... trying to finish a DVD. ãFameä better get itâs shit together ASAP.

Just wait until I tell you about the customized eighteen wheeler!!! 8

What can you say about an action that reveals itself completely? Only that it does. It exists, and dialogue arises from its consequences. Spoonerâs forthrightness with his strategies might seem self-defeating to those with vested interests in the celebrity system; but when read over time, his onstage rants, bitchy press commentary and carefully situated photo ops narrate one of the most powerful collective dreams of the western world÷the dream of what itâs like to will oneself into stardom.

At a recent Atlanta performance on the groupâs first full-fledged tour, Spoonerâs mother was spotted crowd surfing, and the Fischerspooner frontman seemed almost teary-eyed when the audienceâs stomping made the backstage CD player skip. Nowhere in the mythology of rock has the disillusionment of the viewer felt so appropriate, complete and joyous. Atlanta was a homecoming show for Spooner÷a native of the South, with a lilt and manner still intact after his travels÷and his performance seemed to complete a circle for all peasant immigrants to Babylon bred one-step removed from the action, on magazines, television and teenage fever dreams.

Like MJ said, Îãsomebodyâs gotta save the children.âä9

NOTES

1,3,8,9. Casey Spooner, excerpted from e-mails to the author, 2002÷2003)

2,7. Interview with Casey Spooner, New York City, October 2002.

4. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (Henry Holt, 1999).

5. Roe Ethridge, artistâs talk in conjunction with The Bow, Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee, December 2002.

6. Paraphrased from Oscar Wildeâs Wit And Wisdom (Dover, 1998). The Importance of Being Earnest mocks ãearnestnessä in that its insincere characters are rewarded with love, and are eventually proven to not have been acting dishonestly at all.

JOSEPH WHITT is an artist, writer and visiting assistant professor of visual arts at the New College of Florida. An exhibition of his recent work closes this month at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis. Nashvilleâs Ruby Green Contemporary Art Center hosts his first curatorial effort, ãSuperheroes,ä in October.