Dirge: Reflections on Life and Death
DIRGE: Reflections on Life and Death This catalog was produced on the occasion of MOCA Cleveland's 2014 exhibition DIRGE: Reflections on [Ufa and} Death, curated by Megan Lykins Reich, Director of Programs and Associate Curator. DIRGE: Reflections on [Ufe and] Death explores how contemporary artists use their individual practices to capture, react to, reflect on, and make sense of mortality. The exhibition features painting, sculpture, video, mixed media installation, and drawing by artists both living and deceased. The WOO<S range from reflections on one·s imminent death to expressions of grief, memory, and transcendence. Rather than a study of the forces that cause death, the exhibition investigates mortality to identify and reinforce the most powerful characteristics of life. Artists in the exhibition include Ceci ly Brennan, Sophie Calle, Jim Campbell, Vija Celmins, TR Ericsson, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Spring Hubut, Rosemary Laing, Steve Lambert, Kesang Lamdal1<, Teresa Margolies, Kris Martin, Matt Mullican, Oscar Munoz, Takashi Murakami. Mike Nelson, Araya Rasdjarrnrearnsook, Pedro Reyes, Dario Robleto, Guido van der Werve, Hannah Wilke, and David Wojnarowicz. The catalog features exhibition documentation, full color plates, reflections from many of the artists, and a critical essay by Lykins Reich.
Interview with TR Ericsson from the catalogue
What is your relationship to death?
Death is just as baffling to me as I suppose it is to anyone else. My relationship to death is more like a relationship with a death, with someone else’s death. I have a relationship with the death of someone. And obviously we’re talking specifically about the death of a human being, right? If death is just an ending, then lots of things die. But the end of someone, a particular person I knew and loved, that death, that relationship to that ending. I do have that. And it works inside me. My mother’s death is with me all the time. It’s constantly an influence. Something I feel compelled to answer for. What was her death? What was her life, or my life in relation to her death? Death by itself is just another spook show, like love. From an individual point of view love isn’t anything until it’s love of someone or some thing. I asked her once what her thoughts were about death. I recorded her answer over the phone on a cassette tape a few months before she died. “It’s so final,” she said. “I mean that’s it, you die and you’re history,” she paused and added, “I don’t think I’m afraid to die, I don’t think so, it doesn’t matter If I am I have to do it anyway.” What more could anyone say about their own death. You know it’s coming, you know it’s something you have to do.
How has loss or personal experiences with mortality influenced your work (the work(s) included in DIRGE and/or your work in general)?
Her death was ruled a suicide. I was such a mess for a while I nearly gave up everything. I lost control, I let go, I let things happen. I became more like her; self-destructive, careless, attentive, emotional. I was an open wound, I also felt like I knew exactly what mattered and what didn’t. I had no patience for any bullshit. Miraculously and pretty quickly the world opened itself up to me. Every aspect of my life changed. And everything became better and truer than it had been. A mystery I still can’t explain, but I trust it. Let go. Accept. It’s become strategic now. Everything I do comes from this, from this time of losing her. I told a friend recently that, I have a woman inside me. If I’ve learned anything about death it’s this, the dead are inside of us, the ones we really knew and loved don’t disappear. They’re still with us, still present; guiding us, forming us, and influencing us. If we allow it, if we’re open to it, a death or an extreme loss can break us apart and alter our perception of the world. There’s a kind of perfection there, like a perfect work of art, a sudden and overwhelming feeling of potential, there’s no where to hide, no escape from yourself, *there is nothing that doesn’t see you, you change, you become more of who you really are.
How do more universal aspects of mortality such as ephemerality, the fallible body, memory, and time relate to your artistic practice?
From the moment a thing is made it starts to decay. I accept it. Music and writing are uniquely ephemeral but fresh with each play or printing. Visual art is about death, like the body, it shows us it’s dying. Impermanence is always at play in my work. The body is there, or it’s not there, absence conjures presence. Failure and fallibility is built into everything. I think of Giacometti’s skinny, sad sculptures, they look like they should fall apart, but they’re oddly powerful. Or sometimes the body is an erotic presence. Like with the Duchamp work. Or it’s only suggested, like a funny little bronze work I made, a pin that reads I WANT YOUR BODY. It could be sexual. It could also be a lament.
Everything is about the here and now. The past and future are present, here and now. Yesterday, I bought a Breece D’J Pancake book, a Phil Ochs song is quoted in the introduction.
And I won’t be running from the rain, when I’m gone
And I can’t even suffer from the pain, when I’m gone
There’s nothing I can lose or I can gain, when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here.
And I won’t be laughing at the lies, when I’m gone
And I can’t question how or when or why, when I’m gone
Can’t live proud enough to die, when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here.
Complete this sentence: “When I die…
The ellipsis should be just left dangling there, sort of perfect. Or I could have added the Ochs lyrics. When I die…I won’t be running from the rain. But I’ll let it end with my mother again, where it starts. The last line from a greeting card sent from Ohio “treat yourselves” she wrote “it’s all going to be gone one way or another.”