On Monday I got out of bed at an ungodly hour and biked the four miles to the beautiful township of Bolinas, CA to make the 7:15 bus out to civilization. On the way I saw Bobcat and Gray Fox, both life mammals, but I had no time to wallow in naturalist joy for I had a bus to catch. And catch it I did. Two hours and two buses later I debussed at Mission and Eight. First stop: getting a good look at the Morphosis behemoth growing at Mission and Seventh. OMG I love you Thom Mayne. Then I deposited a check, got this week's Onion and bought my Matmos ticket, but those puny errands were but icing on the cake. There was just one reason I had made the pilgrimage: Drawing Restraint. OMG I love you Matthew Barney. I mixed and matched discounts to get my SFMOMA admission down to five dollars US and went in just in time for the daily screening of DR9 (which is, I presume, how the cool cats call it these days.)
The CGI title sequence like totally made me cream my shorts. Best three minutes EVER. I was so psyched. But one hundred and forty-five minutes later I emerged, slightly confused, and headed for the sculpture/installation/photograph component upstairs in search of relief. It pains me so to say this, but my artsnob Lishboa friend was right in saying that Matthew's gone downhill since Cremaster 3. The installations were sloppy and tired, the photos B&W (WTF?). Even though DR9 didn't feel long or anything, it was kind of scattered and a tad on the lame side. I mean, mutual mutilation in a room full of molten Vaseline only goes so far. And, dude, whales? Come on! What's next, unicorns?
In a nutshell, Cremaster Barney kicks ass, Drawing Restraint Barney sucks ass. And who's to blame? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Björk. She's done to Matthew Barney what Madonna did to Guy Ritchie. Megalomaniac, single-named chanteuse marries sheepish, two-named filmmaker from the other side of the Atlantic, proceeds to single-handedly drag his career down crapper. I can almost hear them doing their high-pitched whining. "Oh honey I want to be in your movie! I will prove those critics who tore my last silver-screen performance to bits wrong! I can SO do more than sing and dance! I'm a star! I'll even contribute to the soundtrack! Hell, I'll DO the soundtrack! Please Ricky, I want to be in the showwwww!"
But there's a happy ending waiting in the lobby: a site-specific Janet Cardiff video-walk. You give the museum folk a photo ID and a credit card (they swore they wouldn't rush out and buy eight pairs of Pradas ha ha!) and they give you a video camera with a 15-minute tour that you synchronize with your movements for an eerie adventure through space, in glorious stereophonic audio. You never know if the conversations or steps you hear around you are really there or just part of the glorious stereophonic soundtrack. Ditto for the voice inside your head giving you instructions. Naturally, I giggled all the way. OMG I love you Janet Cardiff.
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