Ballou HS Rocks the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Car Pushed Into Anacostia River By Train
The Saturday Morning Post
Have you ever put off seeing a movie dealing with man’s inhumanity toward man, such as Hotel Rwanda or Life is Beautiful, know it will be shocking and sometimes painful, and will force you to confront the ugly reality that people often do very bad things to other people?
That's how one might feel when approaching Mary Coble's new show, Aversion, at Conner Contemporary Art. Coble confronts the horrible effects of electro shock therapy prescribed to gays and lesbians to re-condition their sexual orientation, in a sparse but powerful collection.
Up until 1973, when homosexuality was declassified as a mental disorder, the American Psychological Association supported reorientation therapy for gays and lesbians. Patients were subjected to repeated sessions during which they were shown a series of erotic images. When shown opposite-sex images no negative stimulation was applied, but when shown same-sex images a shock was administered.
The collection tries to impart some of the pain and suffering of this therapy through multiple media. Located in the back of the room is the main piece of the exhibit, Aversion (Installation) 2007. The installation consists of a large black leather chair, a slide projector, small machine with electrodes, and a small table. The chair is very modern and feels very much at home as a modern piece of furniture within the simple clean lines of the gallery. It looks comfortable, plush and inviting, opposite of the two light blue electrodes on its seat, which are cold, hard and clinical. Their wires follow back to a small squat machine, the shock machine that is on a table next to the chair. A slide projector is behind the chair, loudly cycling through its carousel of erotic pictures. The display is disconcerting and ominous on its own -- but this piece is actually the set for a performance as well. On the opening night of the exhibit, Coble had an assistant deliver a series electroshocks to her as she sat in the chair, alternately being shown sexy images of men and women. When she was shown a woman, she would get a shock.
Photo copyright Mary Coble; courtesy Conner Contemporary Art.
The work is designed to make the viewer uneasy, and it certainly succeeds on that score. During the nearly 20 minute performance, the gallery was packed with people shifting in uncomfortable silence as Coble's arm contracted with the pain of the shocks. The staging of the performance was a bit awkward in the narrow gallery space — it was difficult to impossible to see the images Coble was seeing, depending on where you were — but you did have a clear view of the artist's face, which was the most fascinating part of the performance: it didn't change at all.
Aversion (Recounted) 2007 plays on the lone flat screen TV on the wall to the right. A 20-minute video shows gay men and lesbians speaking plainly into the camera, recounting their experiences with electro shock therapy. Pain, anger, and a myriad of other emotions cycle through with each person’s story. It is hard to watch, but voyeurism takes over.
Two more flat screen televisions on the wall to the left loop short videos of a close up of a hand during a session of electro shock therapy. In each video the hand slowly contacts and relaxes. When contracted it pulses and shakes, fingers splay out. The videos take the experience and strips it of context, rendering the hand disembodied, surrounded by black. Still shots of the hands hang on the wall in the office area of the gallery, invoking studies in life drawing. The various media the collection employs makes the experience very tactile, giving the viewer a sense of what it must be like to undergo reorientation therapy.
Conner Contemporary is located at 1730 Connecticut Avenue NW and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Aversion runs until June 30.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
jeez.."martyr, much?"..I mean it's almost like she NEEDS (electro)persecution.