A Timely “Shared Discursive Space” to Explore Identity
“public intimacies,” curated by Abigail Satinsky, online exhibition featuring Sadie Benning, Alex Bag, and Wanda Raimundi-Ortez
Still from Sadi Benning’s It Wasn’t Love, 1992, Image from: www.peramuseum.org
Tufts University Art Galleries and their Curator of Exhibitions & Programs, Abigail Satinsky, presents public intimacies, an entirely online exhibition of videos. In line with institutions’ creative art-viewing solutions during a time when most stay home, TUAG has given us a uniquely intimate experience reminiscent of current methods of screen communication. The selection of films by Sadie Benning, Alex Bag, and Wanda Raimundi-Ortez (with new films added every two weeks) were made in 1992, 1995, and 2005, respectively. Satinksy’s careful selection reflects her desire to broadcast and find comfort in our tendency to “make ourselves public to feel like there is a public, or maybe that there will be one again” (TUAG).
The Benning, Bag, and Raimundi-Ortez videos are all characterized by an intimate relationship between viewer and performer. The diaristic confessionals are as much about the protagonists’ search for meaning as they are about our finding comfort in this search. And as each artist has given us privileged access into their personal or alter-ego lives, each video exhibited—in context with contemporary social-media and video-sharing platforms—combines to create a timely “shared discursive space” for each pandemic-era viewer to safely explore identity and gain yet another virtual community.
The format of the online exhibition is worth noting before discussing the content of the videos. The first thing the viewer notices is the white-on-black text: “How are you doing out there? How are you doing in there?” (TUAG). Satinsky is checking in with the viewer, the same way a vlogger does at the start of a video. She’s asking how the viewer is doing out there, on the other side of her screen, in the real world. She’s asking how the viewer is doing in there, inside her own screen, in the digital world. Already, a digital relationship is established. We’re acutely aware of the multiple realities in flux in the online exhibition, all somehow coming together to be a part of the same diaristic videos. Content to the platform is uploaded every two weeks, mimicking a vlog schedule. Within the text, we notice public intimacies, the show title, is never capitalized. Satinsky likely made this choice to underline the casual, from-home quality of the videos; the videos are specifically not highly produced. Below the exhibition blurb—which succinctly yet poetically describes an attempt to create this meeting-place of multiple realities—the videos are arranged in a grid, and presented via Vimeo. Vimeo’s layout reminds us of YouTube: the video, the title, the profile, the plays and likes, the description, and the “Autoplay next video” column. We’re in a familiar space; a space most traditionally used to film ourselves talking to the void, or—we’d like to think—our fans. This, I believe, perfectly reflects the “time of uncertainty that marks a sea change in how we can be together” (TUAG): via a familiar and collective space, rich with an archive of artists who have been “working from home” for decades.
Sadie Benning’s 1992 video, It Wasn’t Love illustrates a Hollywood inspired love affair. Filmed as a teenager using a Fisher-Price toy camera, the footage is fuzzy and choppy with high contrast. The video includes found footage and handwritten text to guide the viewer through the story. The piece relies heavily on audio, with narration from Benning and a romantic soundtrack. As the video unfolds, we see Benning explore the boundaries of gender and desire. By reading the text accompanying the video on Venmo, we learn of Benning’s queer identify and their teenage development into this identity. This piece can be summarized as a young person’s private exploration of sexuality and identity through the camera, a device, in Benning’s words, that “wouldn’t talk back to me or judge me.” We recognize this private exploration and feel almost voyeuristic—or as having special permission into someone’s personal development—despite the public platform it eventually inhabited, and the accessible platforms it is now widely available through. And as viewers reflect on their own coming of age (encouraged by the nostalgic film quality and scenes of Benning and another girl evoking “young love”), they’re connected to Benning, and to the mass of online viewers who collectively reminisce or make advancements in their sense of self. The Hollywood and pop-culture stereotypes referenced such as the “rebel” and the “blond bombshell” are timeless, and remind the viewer of who the youth confusedly look to as role models. Benning, however, seems unusually mature; their self-awareness is startling, and their open commitment to working through their identity is refreshing. This video fits well into public intimacies’ “shared discursive space,” where the internet’s current youth population continues to uncover their sense of self through sharing content on social-media and video-sharing platforms. The exhibition conjures fantasies of mass archives of teenage coming of age videos; but Benning’s It Wasn’t Love serves as a good archetype.
Alex Bag’s Untitled Fall ‘95 reminds us of current-day YouTube influencers—think Olivia Jade’s COLLEGE DORM ROOM TOUR 2018. In Untitled Fall ‘95 Bag, “an art student when she made this work, ‘plays’ Bag the art student” (TUAG). Jade similarly plays herself, but instead of addressing a fictitious audience like Bag, Jade addresses her 1.89 million subscribers. Were Jade to have stayed enrolled at University of Southern California, we might have seen her fashion and vice evolve from freshman to senior year. At the start of each semester, we notice subtle changes in Bag’s appearance and habits. Coffee and cigarettes become increasingly common, and her bangs get shorter. An obvious parody of the “art school girl,” the viewer can’t help but laugh at and relate to these developmental milestones. The confessional style of the video reflects pop culture trends of the time. Real World was released in 1992, and popularized the now prevalent reality television staple of the confessional, or tell-all. Bag’s video has only gained relevance since its release. Her art school satire and YouTube-influencer-esque monologues present a very familiar space for the viewer. Moreover, it was a smart choice for Satinsky to include this piece, at a time when so many university students aren’t returning to school this fall. As viewers, we’re grateful for a look into a young student’s personal evolution, and grateful to be able to tune in collectively.
The final video included in this review is Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz’s Ask Chuleta #6: Identity Art. Raimundi-Ortiz, similar to Bag and Benning, explores stereotypes, identity, and vulnerability in her video. Her persona Chuleta educates her audience about “the biases of the white-dominated art world” (TUAG). Raimundi-Ortiz’s work is accessible, specifically void of art- and academic-speak. The viewer is immediately reminded, again, of YouTube and the platform’s popular confessional style. Raimundi-Ortiz uses her accessible platform to promote artists who may not be getting attention in more traditional, white-dominated spheres. Again, the viewer feels like a special guest, intimately privy to Chuleta’s commendable agenda—similar to how one feels when reading an advice column, and is struck by a particular passage’s relevance. Raimundi-Ortiz and her persona Chuleta join public intimacies’ lineup of confessionals, enhancing a virtual community of timeless women and non-binary individuals who challenged identity politics with an untraditional medium. Of course today, video and confessionals are all too common. Perhaps this is why Satinsky selected the videos she did: to remind us that we will always be exploring our identity, and we can always count on others to make their journeys public, for public amusement and benefit.
In public intimacies, Satinsky, along with the artists’ help, successfully created a welcoming space where viewers can “try and figure out how to be themselves” (TUAG). Using videos from the 90s and early 2000s, Satinsky managed to evoke a timeless identity struggle. Whether via a teenage lesbian, an art school stereotype, or a “sassy, no-nonsense NuyoRican art enthusiast” (TUAG), these videos reveal the power of digital mediums and platforms in aiding self-reflection and a sense of community. It’s reassuring to know that the content that lives on the internet has the ability to, years later, breathe new life into shifting cultural and political movements. I would be curious to know how Benning, Bag, and Raimundi-Ortiz see their previous work as existing in the current time of intense and necessary digital consumption. Satinsky posits an excellent hypothesis, and thanks them for their invitation into their “intimate worlds” (TUAG).