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The
recently-established National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens
gives us a look inside media manipulation with Pierre Huyghe's The Third
Memory. It is a documentary-like
presentation about a notorious 1972 bank robbery in
Brooklyn. The audio-visual installation is on
loan from the collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris.
The Third Memory contains
essentially one work, two synchronized video projections that
last about ten minutes. The video projections juxtapose Huyghe's
reenactment/documentary-like reconstruction of a bank robbery
that took place in Brooklyn, New York in 1972, and footage from
Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975), a
movie about that robbery. In Huyghe's work the actual robber,
John Wojtowicz, many years older and out of prison, retells, acts
out, and analyzes the robbery on the sets used in Lumet's movie.
About The Third Memory Huyghe says it is
"…the story of a man who was robbed, who was
dispossessed, of his own image." And the "author
of an action" is given the opportunity to "speak
up…in order to regain his place at the centre of the
plot…"
The
film sets are minimal in design, with floor to ceiling glass
windows, sleek countertops, and shiny metal surfaces. The
projected images almost mirror one another as they cover what
happened on that day in the bank. The audio comes only from
Huyghe's work as Wojtowicz tells his story as he
"remembers" it. With the
bravado of the insecure, Wojtowicz
goes through the events, ending the presentation with a
description, which differs from the other accounts, of the
execution-styled murder of his eighteen year old accomplice, Sal
Naturale, by the FBI acting on orders from Washington.
Included in the exhibition are
displays of enlarged copies of magazine and newspaper articles, a movie poster,
and a video of a talk-show program. Though the latter are merely referential
documentation, their significant inclusion in the exhibition creates a
postmodern
layer that is more interesting than the reenactment.
A
video copy of the Jeanne Parr Show (January 25,
1978) features Wojtowicz from his prison cell and, on the CBS
set, Wojtowicz's ex-lover, Ernest Aron, who has undergone a
sex-change operation and has become Liz Eden. Both parties relate
the intimate details of their unfulfilled lives. The camera angle
on Wojtowicz gives prominence to a Pepsi can at his elbow. Wojtowicz looks directly into the
camera, and tells us that he did the robbery for Aron/Eden so
that she could get the sex-change operation. She tells us
that essentially she has everything she wanted but, inexplicably,
she is still suicidal.
A
display of the front and back pages of the New York Times,
August 24, 1972, features pictures and articles about the robbery
and large headshots of Nixon and Agnew with articles on their
reelection campaign. Nixon's nationally-televised speech at the
Republican National Convention was cut off for the news flash
covering the Brooklyn robbery. Is it possible that the
President would order the execution of the robbers because of his
interrupted speech?
On
the front page of the Daily News, August 23, 1972,
in huge bold type is the headline about the robbery. Also on the
front page is a surreal-looking half-page photo of President
Nixon and his family being greeted by admirers at the Miami
airport. Among the several signs held up is one that says, Youth
for Nixon.
The
article about the robbery in Life magazine,
September 22, 1972, is reproduced in its entirety but also
included are half-page hard-sell advertisements for cigarettes, a
shrinkless cotton material, and a miracle corkscrew reminding us that everyone is
selling something. The article
is written in the form of a screenplay and it prophetically
compares the "rugged good looks" of Wojtowicz with Al
Pacino. In hindsight one wonders at the professionalism of the Life
editors.
Displayed
is a copy of one of the versions of the scenario for Dog
Day Afternoon (January 16, 1974), initially
co-written by P.F. Kluge and Franck Pierson. Kluge was one
of the co-authors of the Life article.
There
is the movie poster from the Dog Day Afternoon, which
announces, "…the bank was like a circus
sideshow…And it's all true."
In
High Society magazine, November 1980, there is a
glamour picture, without irony, of Liz Eden.
In
the universe of The Third Memory, the advertisements, the politicians,
the movies, and the magazines promise us an exciting, rewarding
life, a life filled with "spectacle", yet everyone is out to
outmaneuver everyone else. The consequences
of this manipulation are etched on the body of a suicidal
transsexual who hallucinates about the perfect existence and it inspires a
holdup man to shout, "I
want people out there, I want reporters out there, they're what's
keeping me alive."
The
irony is that all these people looking for
fulfillment in being (in)famous in turn become
the manipulators of the media. But
before The Third Memory’s catch-22
theme exhausts itself, it begs the question: is Huyghe merely one of the players
in this happy company?
Michael
Newberry
2001, revised
in New York, 2007 |
