reviews LABRUCE & KOH
Bruce LaBruce and Terence Koh:
BLame canada
PEREs PROjECts, BERLin
30 sEPtEmBER – 10 nOvEmBER
To many from the United States, Canada is a strange world, and popular Yet the travesty doesn’t stop there. For the opening event, drag
culture has often supported this view. In Bowling for Columbine (2002), for artist Vaginal Davies was invited to act out her version of Julie Cruise’s
instance, self-proclaimed saviour Michael Moore depicts the nation as a ‘Questions in a World of Blue’ (1992), the song that is performed in Lynch’s
weapon-free zone, a stronghold of peace and happiness. In the cinematic movie when Laura Palmer enters the bar. Some glory holes were also used,
fantasies of David Lynch, however, Canada represents the place beyond and now that the party is over, dildos and empty bottles serve as souvenirs
the border, not in a political, but in a moral and psychological dimension. and evoke the impression that the party could start again at any moment.
Lynch’s oeuvre is also the inspiration behind a joint project by Canadian- The work is uncanny in many respects. Considering that it is a piece
born artists Terence Koh and Bruce LaBruce, Blame Canada. Bearing by Terence Koh and Bruce LaBruce, it is tempting to describe it as subtle
in mind the somewhat ambivalent relationship that the US has to its by virtue of its discreet use of sexual references. This relatively coy approach
neighbour, the artists regard Lynch’s movie Twin Peaks – Fire Walk with Me also explains why the installation invites psychoanalytic interpretation
(1992) as the epitome of the notion of Canada as ‘the other’. as a stage for all that is and must remain repressed, strongly borrowing
Blame Canada is a hermetic installation built inside the upstairs from David Lynch, of course. But it also foregrounds an eerie trend in
space at Peres Projects. It is a reconstruction of one of the movie’s sites, contemporary culture that reduces art to a mise en scène for marketing
the infamous Bang Bang Bar, where Lynch’s protagonist Laura Palmer lives events and parties. Granted, the opening performance had its place within
out her dark side and meets her suitors. Upon entering the bar/installation, the logic of the work. But Berlin is not Twin Peaks. What could have come
the first thing encountered is a flashing neon sign – a facsimile of the one in across as a subversive or radical statement in another context is just another
the film. The large main room is sombre and has no windows. It is equipped party in the environment of a dealer gallery that operates according to the
with a stage, bar area, tables, chairs and a so-called dick cave – a platform mainstream market credo of ‘sex sells’. Astrid Mania
with perforated glory holes in its ceiling and floor. This is, after all, a work
by Koh and LaBruce. The artists inscribe an explicitly homoerotic reading
into an environment that Lynch set up to play out tensions inherent to
heterosexual relationships.
Blame Canada, opening night performance, 29 september. Courtesy Peres Projects, Berlin
arTreview 140
December_REVIEWS.indd 140 2/11/07 12:18:59
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