HOW TO SURVIVE A Q&A

it wasn't exactly funny, as it's said, but it did turn out to be an interesting coincidence that, before we left his apartment to walk to the wexner center, the artist had been telling me about an article that he'd been asked to illustrate, an article for a new homo mag that was being edited by some so and so who had been involved with some thing or another, and about how the prospect of being involved with its publication of the magazine wasn't unappealing, but that the article itself was...well...he was sure that i wouldn't like it. and even though i told him that i'd rather read the whole thing alone, apart (if i ended up reading it at all), he insisted on reading me the first paragraph, a cavalcade of tired, offensive stereotypes about angry lesbians and screaming trannies (and it wasn't that the transgendered were necessarily wont to scream, but man, latinas sure are), and out of the cacophony of those angry, tired, offensive stereotypes, the angry, tired, offensive author was trying to make his voice heard. it would seem that the community has become over-queered. it's no longer special enough to be a (not EVEN so straight acting) gay white male. the artist grabbed another snippet: the world -- as it was represented by the staff and the clientele of the bar-restaurant where the author worked -- was apparently at war with "normalcy." it was time that people started paying some attention to the...culturally disenfranchised mainstream homosexual? apparently he had been pushed off the top of the heap. thud. ...oof. but it wasn't even funny. i agreed that i was sure that i didn't like it, and we left to walk to our movie.

on friday night, the wexner center was hosting wu tsang, who was being hosted to introduce and answer questions about wildness, his first feature length film, which the wexner center was screening in conjunction with its hosting of tsang as the first of two visiting filmmakers events on its film and video program for march. the documentary takes its name from a tuesday night art party that tsang and his friends threw between 2008 and 2010, a party which was thrown at a bar called the silver platter, a bar which had established a special reputation for being a place of safe congregation for central american transgender residents of the macarthur park neighborhood of los angeles. tsang, who "has self-identified as 'transfemenine' and 'transguy'" (the independent, 2/5/2013), was drawn to the bar because of its story and its reputation, and became a regular customer because he was drawn to the spirit of its community. the silver platter hosted (and still hosts) friday night fiestas latinas, the spirit and performances of which made tsang think that the silver platter might be a good venue for a dance party that would also serve as a vessel for queer(ish) performance and performance art. the ownership of the silver platter was down, tsang's friends were down, and tuesday nights were slow. so tsang and his friends started throwing a party, and the party got really popular. the ownership was happy with wildness because wildness made tuesdays at the silver platter a draw. the ladies of the silver platter weren't necessarily unhappy with wildness either, because it wasn't like they were ostracized or excluded from the new tuesday nights, even as wildness gained popularity, and even if they weren't exactly incorporated either.

wildness is narrated from the perspective of the silver platter (herself), voiced in the film by a transgender guatemalan actress, a motif which seems to have been chosen by tsang and his co-writer roya rastegar (who had seen a rough cut of a proto-wildness that tsang submitted to the tribeca film festival when rastegar was a programmer there) because, well, otherwise the documentary doesn't seem to know what it's about. as i watched it on friday evening, it alternately seemed that wildness could have been a documentary about its namesake party, or it could have been a documentary about the experience of an underserved queer community on the front lines (and probably losing end) of gentrification; but as a whole, wildness was sufficiently neither. there's party footage, but the story of the party in wildness is limited to its occurrence, its rise and its discontinuation after tsang found himself temporarily on the outs with one of the bars' owners over an issue of inheritance following the death of the brother of the original owner. the ladies of the silver platter are shown posing and performing and are heard speaking in voice overs, but the only of them fleshed out as a person (and wildness skirts reducing her to not much more than a personality at that) is the transgender woman in charge of the door. what to do? make the movie about the bar, which was -- granted, admittedly and of course -- where the art party and its followers crossed roads with the neighborhood transgender community. but then again, although the silver platter is the bar in wildness, it's self-narration culminates in its assumption of the character of an otherworldly anybar, through which [wistful upward sidelong gaze] the people, the communities they come and go, they drink, dance and dream...if these walls could talk...the waves of time...bright lights and big cuddle at macarthur park!

the thing is, wildness is the kind of film that gets making right now. if, arguably, a party like wildness probably took its opportunity to be discontinued more because queer(ish) hipster dance parties got co-opted by mainstream party culture (just before hipster androgyny hit the racks at mainstream retail outlets and three years after "hipster" ceased meaning anything other than a picture of a certain kind of partygoer in a certain kind of outfit) than because of personal (and personnel) complications at the bar where it was hosted, then (tribeca worthy) art films about trannies, hipsters, gentrification and immigrants are, along the same trajectory, just now coming into their cultural cachet. and don't get me wrong: i liked it. i think it's worth seeing (and i think you should see it). i wouldn't say that wildness is an important film, but i do think that its subjects are important to discourses (discursions) on contemporary queer identity and queer(ish) art (...parties). after the wexner center's screening of wildness (and after the subsequent q&a and reception with the director), the artist and i went back to his apartment, where he proceeded to dig up the issue of interview in which he remembered having seen a photograph of tsang after having seen the director in person. in his portrait, the artist is shown topless and arms akimbo -- highlighting the transguy's runway perfect breasts -- in a pair of high waisted shorts by american apparel and a pair of ankle strap heels by christian louboutin. i don't mean -- at all (...but at all) -- to argue in defense of "normalcy" (oof!). but i do mean to question the stunningly appalling sensationalization (and sensationally successful marketing) of those issues and identities with which a film like wildness takes issue and self-identifies.

no one (...but no one) should take the artist wu tsang to task for taking advantage of his art market moment. he's currently being shown at the whitney (after being featured in the 2012 biennial), and it's year old new york news that he's the artist "soon to be featured in every show in town" (galleristny.com, 2/14/2012). his whitney exhibition is coming to the wexner center in the spring. and i don't think that wu tsang is unaware of the cultural wave of time which has carried him to artistic prominence. ten or so minutes of wildness is devoted to the question of sam slovick, the freelance journalist whose "best tranny bar" contribution to la weekly's 2008 "best of l.a." issue caused the organizers of wildness to mount a online "fuck sam slovick" campaign in response to his aggressively transphobic depiction of their bar. "Finally!" the article begins, "A crossroads convergence of self-involved, art-damaged 20-something kids and Third World gender illusionists at a water hole whose geography transcends the expanse of Silver Lake proper." significantly, tsang doesn't try to defend his friends as far as they're depicted in wildness. if anything, the interviews with his party co-conspirators seem to reify their status as self-involved, art-damaged 20-somethings. one of them, accordingly draped in a black pleather vest and a tank top, questions how any of the ladies of the silver platter could possibly have considered the planners of wildness to be interlopers. as if there were somehow money or power behind him??? [cue unironic explosion of the hipster art party] 

i wonder, however, why the artist seems to feel the need to defend himself. he was asked, during the q&a that followed the screening of his film, why he'd not restarted wildness after he'd gotten himself back into the good graces of nora, the current owner of the silver platter. the thing was, he said, that he'd wanted to. it was that the other three were touring internationally as djs, and he'd had the editing of the film... i don't doubt that wu tsang feels an affinity with the trangender community of the silver platter and of macarthur park. i suspect that he even feels an obligation. but at the q&a that followed the screening of wildness at the wexner center on friday evening, he gave no conscionable explanation as to why he hasn't tried to reinstate any hip kid, grassroots activity around the silver platter since the beginning of his meteoric rise -- which, although it has drawn attention (and likely customers) to the bar, appears to have eclipsed his direct involvement with its community. a party is one thing. those of us who feel a certain compassionate intoxication at the visuals of the art party at the bar in wildness know exactly how queer(ish) performance and queer performance art parties come and go. they're meaningful to whom they were meaningful because of their certain ephemerality, because their ephemeral moment meant our youth (however self-involved and art-damaged). but what's the real story -- or at least the whole one -- behind the closing of the legal clinic that was founded by tsang et al. at the height of the party? without begrudging tsang his success or overestimating the power of the party to effect real social change, surely it isn't without justification to ask why the project of wildness seems to have had nothing real to do with promoting or protecting the agency of the ladies of the silver platter.

on saturday evening, the day after the wexner center hosted wu tsang, the new school in new york streamed "a conversation with david france and jim hubbard" as part of its series revisiting the aids crisis. i haven't seen either how to survive a plague or united in anger, but i tuned in online hoping to learn...something. about act up, about the experience, about the legend of art and activism. unfortunately (for me, anyway), the conversation was largely technical. and unfortunately, although both directors are in a position to reposition the aids crisis within the social history of the twentieth century (a position which i understand them both to understand), ironically, neither of them seemed to like the difficult questions either. when they were asked why people of color, women and the transgendered were underrepresented in the leadership of act up and in both of their films, neither director gave an unqualified answer, seemingly for fear that aspersions would be cast, not on their messages, but on their art. gallingly, gay african american moderator tony whitfield seemed embarrassed to have to serve the directors with the question. the best that either director did to address the issue (and i can't say which one it was because i'd stopped paying attention to the video stream at that point) was to say that the educated, privileged (and male) were the only ones with the means to be able to sacrifice the time and resources to the cause that they did. no one, i think, meant to indict either director -- his methods or his compatriots -- with any question, but a less defensive response would probably have gone a long way to ease the tension in the auditorium (and in the chat room) and to further conversation. maybe france and hubbard feel threatened by the war on normalcy. (not even funny?)

on saturday evening, during the q&a with france and hubbard at the new school in new york, i thought again about the q&a with wu tsang at the wexner center. in response to a question about...i forget. it was actually two questions, and the one that i remember was the one about a statement by tsang in wildness about how his chinese father's never having taught him chinese had left a void within him that he had filled (had facilitated filling) by establishing and building relationships, community. the other question must have had something to do with editing? i don't remember. but i do remember that in his response tsang brought up jonathan oppenheim, editor of paris is burning, and i remember the preemptive -- and emphatic -- statement that tsang proceeded to make to distance wildness from any comparison with that film. paris is burning -- that queer(ish) performance and performance art darling of the aughts -- a documentary about the ball culture of certain african american and latino gay and transgender communities in new york in the 1980s, has been criticized for its failure to interrogate white heterosexuality. that failure, critics say, has made it too easily palatable for privileged, white audiences. wildness is not the los angeles latina paris is burning of the 2000s. okay. but what jenny livingston (a privileged, white lesbian originally from beverly hills) did in 1990 with paris is burning is apparently something that neither david france nor jim hubbard seems (i haven't seen their films) to have been able to do in the second decade of century twenty-one: namely, to depict (at all) a minority queer experience in the decade which, for many intents and purposes, has underscored the popular american consensus on glbtq. i understand tsang's desire to insulate himself from certain criticism, but i wonder who he assumes his audience to be at the whitney, or at sxsw...or at tribeca. the comparison between wildness and paris is burning would, in fact, appear to be most apt in its description of the similarities between the criticism that the two films would draw. unfortunately, to the extent that tsang's film does speak for itself in its elucidation of the experience of the ladies of the silver platter, it doesn't speak to its director's ardent denials of what it's not. and at the wexner center on friday evening, the director didn't say anything else either.

i should have talked to tsang at the reception after the film and asked him to say something myself, one on one. but wu tsang, to his absolute credit, is someone with whom i didn't want to talk at a reception at the wexner center, but rather at a party like wildness, at a bar, on the street, somewhere more charged with our nostalgia for the milieu of the party. i did, however, ask him a question during his q&a. he'd actually started editing wildness as a media intern at the wexner center in 2010, which he'd disclosed during his introduction to his film (and his thanks for making it possible). so following on a question to which he'd responded with something about the community in l.a. i asked him to give us a sense of his picture of the community, as it were, in columbus, ohio. i'd hoped to indict his audience there at the wexner center, or maybe to have the director rail at me for my assumption that his audience there was of the privileged variety that would only see his film to feel good about bearing witness to the experience of people with whom they'd never deign to associate -- and afterwards return to their salaries, the theory of their graduate programs, to the gym and to the esthetician. tsang very tactfully refrained from a real response. his time in columbus had been cut short by the death of the owner of the silver platter and by concommitant questions about his party. no one should take wu tsang to task for his success as an artist, but i don't think that anyone in the know can deny that he knows his audience well -- and plays to it at the same time that he makes a point of swearing it off.

at the reception that followed the screening of wildness at the wexner center, i passed on my opportunity to talk to wu tsang. i could have talked to him about his experience with trying to sustain a free legal clinic for immigrants and trans people and passed whatever information i was able to get to my father, who has expressed his interest in founding an institution along those lines in columbus to his retirement. but as we were at the reception at the wexner center, i really just wanted to take his picture. he's stunning, he was impeccably put together, and there in the antechamber of the gallery he cut the perfect picture of the artist. and on friday evening at the wexner center, to my own discredit, i was principally concerned with matters of art. i didn't make the approach to get my photo because i hadn't brought my phone.

the question that lingers is if i'm happy with it. are we happy with it, the art that the gallery complex deigns to consider appropriate to our experience of the community, as it were, at our crossroads convergence of our self-involved, art-damaged selves, our gender illusions, the illusion of gender, its queer performance, performance art, activism, commercial queering, our war with normalcy and the rest of the world. rail and indict. q&a.