The Galleries • Some Lesser Known Rituals of Wimbledon • 19.09.–29.11.2014
The rear of the shirt remains white, no matter what the style! And so does art. Hard, edgy and without compromise – but always white on its backside.
We never heard a male player roaring and grunting like Monica Seles. Women have always played their game harder than the ancestral line of male super artists, players or collectors.
And there they were: women! Eccentric, flamboyant, politicized. This was definitely hardball. While male players were more focussed on diving volleys, histrionic rages or designing underwear, the ladies’ singles, on the other hand – the backhand, as it were – was nothing less than a fight to the end.
Likewise with the ships. Daddies’ cruise ships were falling asleep, whilst the collectors’ yachts at the quay of the Arsenale looked like the big white teeth of an omnivorous oligarch. Shiny shiny super-moneyed dentistry.
Therefore, they called their boat “Guilty”. Changing the dazzling white into world war camouflage, knowing ‚occupy‘ means ‚copupy‘. Go for it. Get your gun.
Die andere Arbeit des letzten, ja eigentlich schon vorletzten Jahres war ‚Rich Texts‘ gewesen, von John Kelsey. Vor jedem Satz standen wir wie Fraser in der art lodge ihrer eigenen Performance und strichen mit den Fingern immer wieder über die Zeilen und Bilder. Isn’t it a lovely piece? This is a real work of art! Mehr als alles, worüber die Zeichen und Zeilen der Selected Writings berichteten, waren es die schwarz-weiß gerasterten Fotos von Tennisspielerinnen, die uns als die eigentliche Information des Buches lisicki-hart ins Feld serviert wurden.
And this again was another form of gender shifting. You were left looking at the canvas, searching for punctum and studium, while at the same time you totally missed the big picture: This definitely wasn’t the men’s singles! The old elites have fallen. Return to Jutta Koether’s “The Inside Job”.