Between a splash and St. Petersburg

So, how come I posted that clip of Brent Corrigan dancing in a New York Club on Youtube -- with the help of Dewayne in San Diego, thank you DeWayne,

http://dewayneinsd.blogspot.com/2009/02/splash-nyc.html

It was November 2008 and I was stuck in St. Petersburg, no, not Florida, Russia. It’s one of the hardest places to work in as a free lance artists and scholar. I don’t know so many places that I also tried to work in, but this one for sure is not easy, specifically if you are let down by your collaborator and your colleague accidentally had purchased a 3-day instead of a 7-day visa. Good thing was that I had internet access in my room, anyway, I can only recommend the Old Nevsky House to any daring traveller who thinks he/she needs to see the winterpalace and the maze of backyards, the marinskij or the nevsky prospect (just make sure to talk Russian, as people you meet in the streets usually do not really like to speak or understand English).

This was my island of comfort, and there I checked brentcorriganinc.com and saw an announcement of an appearance in NYC, a city I love, even though I visit far too rarely (the usual, financial reasons).

So there I was under a heavy cloud of November fumes in the middle of Petersburg, contemplating and surfing just for fun if it would be possible to hop across the atlantic just for one night in a club in Manhattan. The flights would have been astronomical, both financially and duration wise. And if I remember it right the connections (a lot of changes on the way!) would have been via Sibiria and the far East. Well, I had already an amazing flight Vienna-Moscow-Petersburg (financial reasons again) with changing in Moscow, taking out the luggage, going by a bus to the other airport (from Sheremetyevo international to Sheremetyevo national, and I can tell you, that’s a big difference) standing in line hardly awake to be let onto the Russian soil (which is holy, as you know) and then waiting 5 or 6 hours half asleep in the middle of all those early morning travellers and a young guy suddenly reappears in camouflage uniform after you have closed your eyes for a while; but the plan to go to NY would have been yet another category.

So I went on skype and contacted my dear Tribeca based web artist friend Ursula Endlicher

(http://ursenal.net/), she does the most amazing projects between web and performance, like impersonating websites, dancing html butoh and knitting colourful wigs representing the link architecture of major sites such as Microsoft and google, but that is another story), and she said, hey I am busy and I sadly gave up.

I had this stupid idea that this would be the occasion to talk to Brent about the article I was about to write about him (and wrote meanwhile, for the catalogue of the exhibition “The Porn Idenity” in Kunsthalle Wien, http://www.kunsthallewien.at/, catalogue to be ordered at the publisher http://www.vfmk.de/). The text is in German though, still planning to publish an English version online.

Anyway, that plan would have been utterly unrealistic, as Brent was actually eager to get to another party, as one gossip website insinuated after the event. I don’t blame him, in NYC one party is never enough.

But I am getting ahead of myself. First things looked dim in gloomy Petersburg, but a few days later, the day of the event in fact, Ursula said she will grab a nice gay friend and go to that club, Splash, video camera in hand. And she did. The place was packed, and, as she noted as a participating (you can hear some if her enthusiastic outbursts on the clip, she has a world shattering way of laughing than is utterly contagious) but still critical observer, everything tipped a bit to the commercial side. The autograph moment after the dance, also documented by her camera (but not posted (yet)) was short, she did not get close to BC.

Encounters with celebrities are tricky. I mean, BC was/is not HER idol, but mine. No idea how my experience would have been if I had been in her place. I guess it would have been similar, but I would have pushed my way closer to the stage. On the other hand, BC is not yet a star in the classical pop star/Hollywood star kind of meaning (maybe he will be, maybe not). People say that meeting your idol always is a big disappointment. I don’t know. But I assume that you have to make a transition from one mode to another. From a distanced object of projection, an image, an embodied idea if you will, to actually meeting and talking to a person. In a way you will meet a completely different person; and not everyone is ready for that (usually the star IS NOT).

Brent claims that he is very approachable and judging from my online contact with him I think this is true (And mind, I am not a potential model!).

For whatever reason he was not on that day in Splash. My friend Ursula filming in the middle of the crowd did not cross the magic line. She just filmed a little idol in motion, doing something he is an amateur in (dancing) for professional reasons (promoting his fame within the gay community and his dvd production).

That’s a funny and charming mixture, and very contemporary; I could go on with Paolo Virno’s ideas of virtuosity as phenomenon of the new post-fordist economy http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcmultitude3.htm

where you mobilize even your plain human resources such as humour, common sense and good conversation to extend your market value, a situation that creates a completely new blend of amateur and professional agency, but I stop here.