memo #8
on DOOM, systematic shopping, berlin stint, becoming-lady
I have spent the last few days sick sick sick. Like fever dream nothing is real sweat lodge psychedelica sick. Today is my first day of lucidity, so I’m trying to make it a good one by getting back on routine (stretch, smoothie, coffee, book, walk, and so goes my little life). Anyway, this is mostly a post I wrote last week, before my descent.
I saw Anne Imhof’s DOOM on the second to last night of the performance’s run. I was able to avoid most spoilers, even though it felt like everyone had already gone and said their piece. I went with art dealer friend Sam Wilken (Hi, Sam!), and we ran into many others. Afterward, we made our way over to Donahue’s with Juliet Vincente, Julian Ehrlich, and Tristan DePew. The restaurant was empty aside from a woman who the bartender claimed was the performance’s costume designer and her friends, who he said were “celebrating.” According to this Ssense interview, Eliza Douglas did the costumes, and the person at the bar was not Eliza so he was just talking shit, I guess. The bartender asked us if we liked the performance and we all said “eh.” We described it and he said, “Oh, like Sleep No More.” To which we said, “Yes exactly.”
There have been plenty of salient write-ups of the performance and its everythingness and nothingness, so I won’t retrace the details. I liked Jeppe Uglevig’s piece for Spike most of the one’s I’ve read so far. Overall, I don’t have issues with Anne Imhof; she seems more symptomatic of something happening in the art world than actually bad in any regard herself. I will say though, that I don’t understand the impulse, as a nearly 50 year old German woman, to come to the U.S. and make a massive performance work that is ostensibly about the dark underbelly of late 20th century American culture. It just comes off as cringe. But I am happy that it happened, because it just shows how exhausted all of these tropes are and exhausted them further. Accidental Accelerationist? But anyway, I don’t know. It sort of makes my brain feel like mush trying to think about it intelligently. Maybe it’s a success in that it sucks us all into its vapid vortex and pulverizes our critical faculties, not with its awesomeness and complexity, but like in the way that watching Love is Blind renders you vegetal.
However, I did take real issue with the use/abuse of Romeo and Juliet. 1) Why choose such iconic aka basic-ass material? Rule 1 of Contemporary Art: base your thing on something esoteric, duh. That’s how you make it sEeM SmArT. 2) Why “use” it in such a minimal and reductive sense. Like, oh there are two kids? And then two teams with the names of the Shakespeare characters? And some bad Burroughs-style cut-up text from it? Cliffs notes R&J. 3) We have Baz at home, which she vaguely referenced in the performance (self-protective?), but like, sorry that movie is pretty fun; way more fun than this! 4) If you’re going to fabricate referential historical value by framing this performance as “Romeo & Juliet” at least mic the actors such that we can hear them say their lines. The sound design really brought home the fact that the Shakespeare of it all, the theater in general even, was of minimal concern. It was deemed sufficiently to namecheck the Most Famous Play Ever and just have people skate around and do ballet.
Around the third night of the performance, and just after I’d published memo #7, Alec Recinos wrote me saying that I’d probably find the Imhof interesting in relation to what I was saying in that post about Charli XCX. So true, Alec. So true; it is the same pop exercise as Charli’s “Guess,” (And of the Dare’s “Girls.” Harrison should be given credit for cracking this before Charli!) offering the trappings of transgression without anything transgressive. As well, like both Charli and Kendrick’s recent mainstage performances, we’re fed all the machinery of meaning-making with nothing to deliver, not even allegory. I’m the last person who will ask art to SAY something, but I do believe it should be doing something. While they are interesting object lessons, Charli and Kendrick are off the hook, pop culture is not art (sorry) in the way that Anne Imhof’s performance art is or asks to be considered as art. In Imhof, and elsewhere, It’s almost as if art for art’s sake has given way to “subversion” for subversion’s sake.
Later on the first week of DOOM’s run, Laszlo saw it with Satya and said it was very neoexpressionista. Which, after seeing, I agreed with. It’s neoexpressionista in that it takes as fact, takes for granted, the images and symbols of subversion (“The neoexpressionista renders everything in his world–cinematic or otherwise–an image or an object, or at best a tool ready-at-hand.”) The tattoo gun, the rock band playing at prom, skateboards, these things have been symbols of American (and globalized) subculture and its negotiation with the mainstream for decades now. Arguably these tropes are now fully embedded in the dominant culture. (Like if you watch a 90s or 2000s teen movie now, there’s not a soul who would openly identify with the popular kids. Everyone thinks that they’re the lonely, quirked-up, complex protagonist. It’s something separate from simple “main character syndrome,” and probably has contributed to a lot of the poorly-formed privilege politics of the day. With such a media diet, you would never believe that someone who has power over you might also have a complex inner life. I digress.) To treat these tropes as facts, or maybe image-objects, and not search out the subversive in its new forms, is frankly dumb, and as an artist it is embarrassing. But it’s okay, a lot of artists are guilty of this and it’s a problem of age (which is why I like Jeppe’s Spike piece, he called Imhof Gen X which really explains so much of this) and laziness (easier to play the subversion-game than wonder what would really thoroughly and structurally subvert norms).
Moving on. A few days later, I went to see some shows in Chelsea after a meeting with my gallery. I was told the Laura Owens show was a must, so I made my way down to Matthew Marks. I like Laura’s work, and have a soft spot for it because she was one of the first contemporary artists I had anything to do with professionally–I worked at Los Angeles bookstore Ooga Booga during school breaks in college and helped to set up the shop at 356 Mission when the space first opened with Owens’ massive show. (Note: Wow, revisiting the exhibitions at 356. What a time to be alive. The fact that this was what we were hoovering up from 19 to 24. . . didn’t know how good we had it.)
I thought the paintings in the new show were cool. I mostly wanted to see the room-within-a-room thing that people had mentioned to me. It sounded a bit decadent (was less so in person), but I don’t have a fundamental problem with that. More interesting to me is that this is one of many rather involved gallery build-outs at Chelsea shows in the last few months. The other one that comes to mind is Mark Leckey’s recent show at Gladstone. Both the Owens and the Leckey had little hidey-hole elements in the walls. Owens’ had mechanical doors that revealed small paintings underneath what otherwise looks like seamless hand-painted wallpaper. In Leckey’s show, you had to peer through these little cut-outs to see a huge projection. So, not sure what to do with that. Yet another crisis in exhibition-making? Personally, I just try to let the gallery do its thing. You’re never going to subvert the white cube really. But both of these artists seemed to rework the architecture for reasons other than subversion, so I think there’s something else in the air. Maybe a desire for more depth, less frontality. Discovery!!! I can get with that.
On Thursday, I went to see Kraftwerk with Octavia, which was really fun. Best to ever do it, and all that. It was a nice counterpoint to all of these spatially complicated gestures that I’d seen that week. Sometimes four guys, some beep-boops, and a single screen is enough to get the people going. One really must remember that sometimes there is nothing wrong with traditional formats. But also, that’s crazy that I’m calling Kraftwerk trad. Anyway, evergreen prestige German export. Loved dancing like I did when I was but a bebe and my father would put Kraftwerk on in the car. Steady diet of Kraftwerk, Talking Heads, Black Sheep, and Soul Coughing. (Fun fact: Laszlo is the only person I have ever met outside of my immediate family who had heard and liked Soul Coughing; like I didn’t show it to him. Surely this is a reflection of my sample population but heart eyes nonetheless. I used to be obsessed with this song, “Is Chicago Is Not Chicago.”)
Speaking of Germany, I’m going to Berlin for a few months for a fellowship and research for a theater/film project. Usually I travel a lot for work, but somehow I’ve managed to not leave the tri-state area since the fall. In theory, this is what I wanted. I’m sick of three to four day economy flight missions to the far reaches of the art market (jk: always just London, Frankfurt, or Los Angeles for me).
In the last two years, I’ve gotten over feeling guilty for not being stoked on the privilege of global business travel. No matter how cool the place, these trips are largely physically and emotionally disruptive, often even punishing (one time I flew from Los Angeles to London on now-defunct WOW Air, a trip that took something like 18 hrs total each way including the weird Iceland layover. I spent maybe 22hrs total on the ground in London, most of which was spent sleeping, the rest preparing and giving a talk.). On top of being grueling, usually the most I stand to make off of one of these trips is $1,000, unless I do some serious negotiating (likely to fail). If I’m in a fun city with friends in it, shave 25%-$50 (depending on how fun the city and the friends. . .) of that for on-the-ground expenditure. If I’m doing an exhibition maybe I’m making more, but I’m also working more, and will have been working on the project for months to that point. On top of that, I have come to realize that the pseudo-glitz of a lot of this doesn’t totally land for me, as the child of two film industry professionals who were often on the road in exciting places during my childhood. Being on the road for work offers more face-time with deep-seated ‘airplanes make the people go away’ trauma than it does fab travel tales. If only I had pictures of all of the Swiss business hotels I’ve cried in. Ha-Ha.
Travel anxieties aside (didn’t even get into the Missing BF of it all. I’ll spare you, dear reader.) I am really excited about my upcoming Berlin stint. Traveling for a lengthy period is a totally different game from the three night drop in. I love a long trip. I especially love packing for a long trip. It is an organizational, logistical puzzle of the best sort. How do you pack for six weeks in another country, just as the season is poised to change? How do I know my near-future self? And how do I know which books to bring for her?
So, I started to pack by trying to go through my closet. It’s supposedly Spring anyway (still 40 something degrees today, though), prime time for taking stock, flushing out, etc. In doing so I found that I have a lot of clothing that I not only don’t wear but that actively provoke negative feelings upon encounter. I don’t think I hated all of my clothing this much three months ago.
Historically, I have a pretty easy time packing, because my wardrobe intentionally packs down easily into uniform as needed–an everything goes with everything series of combinations of standard roomy Ralph Lauren or Brooks Bros. mens button-up, jeans, fitted cardigan, wide trousers, sneakers. I have been wearing versions of this structural-ensemble for most of the last ten to fifteen years, excluding a skinny-jeans detour in 2017 that Natasha recently excavated when we were briefly reminiscing about our trip to Lisbon that year. I don’t think that I’m over these fundamental elements–classics, duh–but I am over the items in my closet themselves. For example, my button downs are all striped and roomy, and many are worn from wear. I want them solid, crisp, and maybe even fitted. I bought a late 90s Benetton button-up on eBay a few months ago to this end. It’s a little too big for me, so it doesn’t totally scratch the itch, but it was informative. I’ve also been wearing the turquoise CDG button up in a sort of cotton-jersey that Laszlo got me for Christmas last year. I love it, but it’s bright and fun, and now I need it in five shades of neutral that I can wear on all occasions.
It’s all coming down to closet stagflation. Slow growth–the rate of Aria’s closet expansion has slowed to near halt in the last year; High unemployment–most items in the closet are not in rotation, creating a lumpen surplus at the bottom of every drawer; Inflation/rising prices–the price of new items appears to be at an all time high; wherever one looks: at least $170 for a random cardigan if you want it to not be polyester-blend. I was talking to a friend earlier this week about shopping habits and we both are wondering how did we afford all this clothing that we have. It seems like I really cannot afford to be buying clothing now? Could I ever? Is my brain just firming up as I age?
Ah, yes. It’s really coming down to shifting closet needs–demographic transition?–which I finally must come to terms with. Aka becoming-lady (lady-hood, a state of endless becoming. And that’s on de Beauvoir via Butler, but also Cixous! Read my favorite Cixous, The Third Body!). Like, as in, no longer being someone that someone would offhandedly pejoratively refer to as “Oh, that girl,” and instead would refer to as, “Oh, that lady.” I’m not saying that I am officially in the latter camp ( I know that at 31 I am not Old), but I know I’ve been getting Ma’am’d as often as I’m getting carded.
But to be honest, this isn’t about the People. It’s about Inner Feeling. There are a few things happening in my life that are making me feel less like just another girl and more like a lady, one of them being that I’m just literally being required to attend events and represent myself as a rational adult more often. Weirdly, this has not something required of me on a regular basis. As a ‘working artist’ and a young one at that, there really has been No Dress Code. There isn’t an officially one now either, but more and more, I have to go to real meetings, screenings, conferences with real important people, for whom I am not doing a precocious song and dance, just the normal gendered and racialized dance of commanding respect and also seeming cool and chill but trying not to feel out of place or weird. All of that horrible wonderful stuff that makes up existing in the world, whoever you are. TLDR, I am just in more situations in which I want to be wearing something well-tailored; I’m less concerned about it being interesting or creatively-rigged. This realization is kind of a bummer. It feels like the clothing version of realizing you can’t really stay out late the week of a deadline, or like the clothing version of I need my morning smoothie or else, or like the clothing version of doing the reading. Am I making any sense?
So, due to this crisis and my coming travels, I been shopping. For real this time. Not whim shopping, but systematic shopping. And it has been really, really hard! It has been hard not just because *hand delicately placed on brow* shopping is hard, but because I am also trying to carry over some element of fiscal responsibility to the project, a.k.a not buy Lemaire pants sight unseen at full price on Ssense and not buy 5 pairs of vintage designer pants at a sixth of the price on eBay and The Real Real. The latter is just a gambling tactic that looks better on paper but adds up in dollars and in occupied closet space.
Instead, I’ve mentally broken my wardrobe down into a series of categories, such as the aforementioned roomy button-ups, fitted cardis, jeans, and trousers. Then, I’m assessing how many of the existing items in each group I still Fuck With, and for what occasions they are suitable. For instance, t-shirts. I have probably 10 to 15, but I wear 3-5. Two of the very-in-rotation-shirts are graphic tees, one fitted and one oversized. The other two are a Flore Flore boatneck, and . . . ? Maybe that’s it. The out-of-use shirts are largely Brandy Melville tees that I compulsively buy when passing the Soho store because it feels amazing to momentarily benefit from the fast fashion supply chain. But these looks bad after a few wears and washes. Jeans are similar. I have like 9 pairs of jeans, but most days I wear my Alex Mill Carla jeans or a pair of black Uniqlo Us from last year (caveat here: A lot of my jeans have holes in them, so I can’t wear them in winter. So, these numbers might shift as we head into Spring.). Anyway, you get it. We’re talking major bloat. But the real concern is not just having so much stuff. It’s that even the shit that I’m wearing regularly, I’m not in love with. And I think I’m not loving the shit because the shit rarely suits the occasion.
This is so boring. I don’t even have images to make this interesting. God help you if you’re reading this.
Since breaking my wardrobe into these categories, I’ve had a relatively successful time exploring options for replacements/additions. For instance, in the fitted cardigan category: Last year, I wore this polka dot CDG cardigan to death. As slightly-seen in this gloomy photoshoot from Plaster Magazine:
In theory, I still like this cardigan, but every time I approach my closet I feel an extreme amount of ambivalence toward it. Like, so extreme. It’s sort of weird. Similar thing is happening with this Kiko sweater that was peak Aria in 2022/23.
I’m not going to throw either away because they are very precious to me, but I went ahead and bought two vintage Sonia Rykiel sweaters on eBay to switch things up. Maybe I simply need a new fucking cardigan option, simple as that?
I’m certainly not the first person on this website to preach the SR vtg market gospel. But if you like Kiko and Eckhaus and you want something that doesn’t scream either, then cop a $40 Sonia Rykiel cardi.
This one was even cheaper ($18), and a nice alt to the classic Agnes B. snap, which I always consider buying but then feel stupid about because it’s so obvious and so late of me. Then I see them on friends and they’re great and I almost buy again, then I don’t, then I see . . If you’re going to get one, get it used and in an unusual variation. (Talking myself back into it). Anyway, this SR jawn is a direct alt to Eckhaus Latta’s snap range. A little more low-key. Or it’s a “funkier” alt for this boring Leset cardigan you can buy for $130. Another Rykiel, another (warmer) one, and a top.
My cardigans have not arrived yet, so I’m basically cursing the whole endeavor by writing about them here. However, life is about taking chances and this (part of the) post is about trying new things.
Continuing to experiment with spending in accordance with my (current means x fickleness / current number of in-house options) formula, I bought some pants from The Gap. I’m not going to jinx this one by saying anything more about the purchases. I’ll be really annoyed if they suck. (I also had some other pants plans, getting as far as the checkout stage on Arket after much hemming and hawing, only to find that they don’t ship to the U.S. But the experience was instructive, as it turns out that I really really want a pair of low-slung khaki trousers. Who would have thought? The search continues.) I also bought V-neck t-shirt and a henley from Gap. I’m just like, what if The Gap is amazing? What if that $10 t-shirt does the trick and all these people posting about whichever $100 perfect white tee are total suckers? This is also an exploratory mission aimed at ascertaining whether it might just be that I no longer have an interest in the T-shirt As Form. And an exploratory mission to see whether it is, in fact, I who am the sucker.
I also bought two Gil Rodriguez dresses on Nonna (lots on sale there still, including the one that I bought that was cheap enough to make me feel I was justified in buying the other one too. Emphasis on feel.), because all of this systematic shopping reminded me of how agonizing last summer was with regard to what sort of lightweight dress one could wear as an adult woman. Shouts out to the group chat. I am not sure anyone other than Zoe found a personal solution to this one. The best I did last year was a sort of matronly Muji dress that looked cool with an worn-out t-shirt underneath. So I figured I’d get on this early. Also it might get warm enough for a summer dress by the end of my Berlin trip? If not, I’m off to Porto in June anyway.
I’m tiring of hearing myself talk about this. So I leave you with a few final thoughts:
I bought these Ecco shoes (full disclosure, I saw an IG post of Chloe Sevigny in them or a similar pair months and months ago and tried to find them but couldn’t. Was very happy to see them pop up finally. I guess she’s the face of ?). If they’re hitting IRL, then I might get them with a pop of color.
Laszlo’s sister, Eva (Hi, Eva!), asked me to say some words about “Isabel Marant/Boho vibes 2025.” I wasn’t totally sure what she meant; I was aware of the Marant revivalism in the air, (sneaker wedge) but less so the boho part. (I got swept up in it last summer when I bought one of those Isabel Marant leather jackets that were cool when I was in like middle school. It was so cheap on The Real Real that I couldn’t not. I was really excited to have one, but turns out when I see myself in the mirror in it, I look like a Cool Mom circa 2007. Something about the epaulettes?) But then in my Systematic Shopping, I did start to see that every website is pushing a “bohemian” look. I guess I have seen lots of girls downtown wearing like peasant skirts and boots, but it didn’t read as boho to me for some reason. I guess it’s like a grunge to boho-hippie backtrack. It’s funny how fashion trends are going in reverse curlicues. Digging deeper in a shallow hole. Also, in the Anne Imhof, Talia Ryder’s costuming was def on some y2k boho Chloe shit with that top (similar but ugly?). Anyway, I’m overall down for boho 2025 if it’s a thing because it significantly opens up the spring/summer hot weather options. Gauzy tops and dresses in natural materials. Yes. I probably will not venture into boho accessories though. This also also probably has something to do with being a teen in the late aughts and early 2010s. We were out in full on fringe moccasins. Never again. (But between Toteme’s pseudo-moc winter shoes and the boat/car shoes being pushed this summer, we’re only a cycle away from full moc. Keep your wits about you or you could end up like:
Just kidding, more like. . .
In my opinion, the Better-Boho has always been the more cottage-core, not the summer of love folk mixed up with LA Rock-n-roll thread, if that makes sense. The boho diva look was always a little more basique. You want your boho with a good dousing of something else, never undiluted boho. Never undiluted anything (that’s the trick to personal style, for all of the lost shoppers of substack).
By the way, it was really hard to find any evidence on google of non-native people wearing Moccasins. Except the Minnetonka site, which actively urged buyers to wear their shoes to Coachella as recently as 2019. Good for them, holding the line. They’ll do well in Boho 2025. I suppose that’s another take that one could have on boho ‘25: Are cultural appropriation anxieties fully a thing of the past?
I am currently reading Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince and Walter Benjamin’s The Origin of of the German Trauerspiel (Tragic Drama). Both bring me great joy! The Murdoch is making me impatient for summer, but that has nothing to do with the book’s contents so far. I just happened to read Under the Net in Cape Cod last year, purely associative.
That’s everything that’s been swimming around the stagnant waters of my sickbed brain.
xx
Art is cool but I love reading about wardrobe-building pathology