It is impossible to understand PhatGuido/Crash Wong's video art outside the context of the Lacanian gaze and its Freudian antecedents, not to mention the oeuvre of, say, Marina Abromavich and Vito Acconci. Guido appears in a gallery-like space, against a wall, perhaps meant to evoke the backstop of a firing squad execution, some grimy abattoir in Sarajevo, as alluded to in Abramovic's bone-washing piece, or the repeated motif in the line art of Sergio Aragones. No one kills him, except in the Derridean sense that he is dead the moment that Youtube's codecs convert him to a symbol of himself.

We gaze at this living/dead symbol but we do not see his eyes and in their absence we miss our own reflection; his desire becomes opaque, but of course this is just a coquettish dance, a veil thrown up between us and the erotic heart of the exchange, never meant to obscure, descending leaf-like and limp of its own weight and revealing Guido, erect and stiff, gesturing like an emperor for his noose and his double-vented, labial jacket.

We must wonder, in fact, if Guido's screen name deliberately references, in its seemingly inexplicable Italianate, Acconci himself, and more specifically Acconci's "Seedbed," in which the artist reclined beneath an anonymous ramp masturbating and communicating his sexual fantasies about spectators through a PA system. Guido/Wong's ramp is the internet, though he seems too neat and perfect to commit self abuse; are we to imagine him as a smooth nullo? His companion pieces to "110919" suggest that we are not; in "110915 #2" he grinds his black, sleek monkstraps into the ground before the place of execution, walking in neurotic little dashes, rejecting an Antigone-like acceptance of the death drive; desire, sex, life, blood all thrum in his high trousers and his menacing wrestler's gait.

We see him at his cruelest in "110912 WWIW"; he begins with his back to us and as he stalks away from the camera and towards the wall of execution he adjusts his coat and hunches his shoulders like a gladiator entering the arena; we who are about to die salute you; yet then that final opaque turn, the stoney features, the anonymous glasses; he is a subject that refuses to reconcile itself with the death drive and yet refuses to embrace the shark-like Freudian response of constant motion and consumption. But this too is a lie; his armor is the poison root that he gnaws unceasing to sustain both life and agony.

I state this without reservation: PhatGuido/Crash Wong's small video oeuvre is the most significant artwork of the 21st century, and possibly of all time. We have only begun to chart its waters, and they are deep, deep, deep.

Last edited by Gilgamesh2003 (2011-09-21 11:56:38)

Gil and all iGentts

Here is your chance before someone at AAAC gets in and outbids you

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Carol-Christian-Poell-oxford-size-9-2009-cordovan-single-lace-/200654689542?pt=UK_Men_s_Shoes&hash=item2eb7f39506&clk_rvr_id=267173742528

Classic delusion (or false modesty) from Simon Crompton - http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2011/09/permanent-style-in-pen-magazine.html

"You could never refer to yourself as a style icon. But if someone else gives you the title, it's alright to pass it on, right?"

No because every freebie or discounted suit looks like a pile of shit on you. Why does anyone take this dumpy shill seriously?

Last edited by Gilgamesh2003 (2011-09-22 19:38:36)