Apinan Poshyananda

Prof. Dr Apinan Poshyananda is Director-General, Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture, Bangkok, Thailand.

The Celtic Slant

The first time I came across Amanda Coogan’s work was on a late Friday night in a small hotel in Limerick, Ireland in 2001. As adjudicator for EV+A 2002 my task was to select and award works submitted by a wide range of artists. Among hundreds of portfolios, catalogs and slides by Irish and international artists, the image of a blonde woman seated on the steps with trails of urine between her legs gave me an excuse of wanting to break from my duty. Not to mention the continuous thumping music from the pub next door made me curious to experience an exhilarating darkness of Irish Friday night in Limerick.

I soon found out that morality and Friday night did not mix well for Irish folks. Deafening music, body odor, cheap perfume, smoke, Guinness, Jameson and soggy carpets blended with a sea of whirling images of drunken stupor, sexual encounter and aggression. Human behavior in certain social contexts and conditions allowed them to act in extraordinary ways. Crawling on streets, pissing on pavements, puking onto the lover’s face and brawling that led to a bloody fight were some extraordinary “live performances” that I witnessed on a short duration of my stroll along the main street. Later I was informed that such behavior was quite normal as these folks needed channels of release after days of hard work at the office or school. In life sometimes it is normal to be abnormal.

Coogan’s performance of herself pissing in front of an audience in Dublin could be interpreted as part of ordinary life in Irish genre. Yet, such an act required intense body control and nerve to make the performance not simply an act of pissing in one’s pants. Her performance triggered a series of controversial images that dealt with art and body fluids. Bruce Nauman’s Fountain (1965), Robert Mapplethorpe’s Jim and Tom, Sausalito (1977) (one man urinating into another man’s mouth) and Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987) are examples that come to mind. In the form of video art, however, Coogan’s urinating in front of the camera that could be played repeatedly on the screen straddles between the realms of art and voyeurism. The blue-eyed blonde in doll-like pose stares at the spectator as she releases the acidy ochre fluids from her body. Like the game of water sports the girl displays the fountain of urine for the excited customers.

Coogan’s performances and images contain beauty and disinterestedness. In Kant’s way of recognizing something beautiful as “purposiveness without purpose” we relate Coogan’s Medea (2001) and Miltown Madonna (2001) as beauty independent of pleasurable sensations they bring about. As contemporary Medea and Madonna, Coogan becomes symbolic of sacred nourishment and sensuous seduction and brutality. To appreciate her aesthetic beauty we perceive the icons with disinterestedness and no erotic desire. Through Coogan as icon of Medea, a pagan goddess, sign communication displays how deaf people have received all kinds of mental and physical abuse.

After Coogan won the EV+A 2002 award she made her travel to Thailand where she made performances during Asiatopia 2003, international performance art festival in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Coogan offered a new slant and controversy for the Asian audience. In Reading Beethoven (2003) performed at the Alliance Francaise, Coogan in deep-cut red dress captivated the viewers with her rhythmic violent body movement. Her body language to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony became signs of emotive force that needed no translation. At the Art Museum, Chiang Mai University, ghost-white Coogan appeared in a blue suit on a pedestal like a blonde diva holding her bare breast as an offering gesture to Thai audience. Out of context, Coogan’s performance gave a strange mixture how symbolic meaning can be interpreted and deciphered. Fascinated by white flesh, freckles and pink nipple, Thai spectators saw multiple layers of cryptic messages including Christian devotion, pagan worship, mother and milk, MTV cult and catwalk goddess.

When Coogan recorded her performance in Chiang Mai with sparrows flying out of her skirt she gave a new interpretation of symbols through her Thai experience. In Buddhist practice, the liberation of captive animals signifies acts of release, forgiveness and making merits. Loaded with symbology that carries different meanings in different settings, Coogan as feminine icon evokes liberation, penance and female force. Instead of sweat and urine, Coogan offers flutters of feathers and wings.

In Liverpool, Coogan’s Beethoven, the Headbangers performed at the Philharmonic Concert Hall was arguably one of the most talked-about works at the international biennial. The performance was repeated outside the Bluecoat Gallery as more than a hundred performers in blue wrinkle-free Marks & Spencer shirts wriggled and writhed in frenzy to Beethoven’s music and Coogan’s mesmerizing action. Inspired by the frenzy of Liverpool-Everton fans at football matches, Coogan as conductress/cheer leader thrived on the hypnotic dialog with her performers. As if in a trance under the spell of cult worship the performers became momentarily deaf to outside noise. Immersed in Beethoven’s sound they became totally engrossed with the symphony until the music finally died down. Slowly, they came to their senses of reality and normalcy.

Coogan’s chameleon-like stance allows her to transform into various guises. Her playfulness and ability to tease the audience into submission through seduction or obsession makes her one of the most promising prospects in today’s body art and performance art. Coogan is truly a charismatic live wire with Celtic slant.

 

Apinan Poshyananda, October 2004.