Annika Larsson: andrehn-schiptjenko

The climactic "penis hanging" display in Annika Larsson's video fresh Gravity, 2003, retraces the dark fringes of her earlier themes: pleasure from pain, erotic ritual, and a taste for sadism's aftermath. Moreover, failed episodes of autoerotic asphyxia reverberation Larsson's narrative style, where extreme points are left hanging. But while upon familiar terms with Larsson's fictionalized exotica, of recent origin Gravity is on its have a title to in confronting the history of lethal sexual behavior and its self-inflicted moral predicaments.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In Dog, 2000 and Pink Ball, 2003 Larsson pushed not upon Barbara Kruger's mocking of male sexual personae (You fabricate Intricate Rituals Which Allow You to Touch the Skin of Other Men) to take an account of tightly constructed stories of initiates playacting glamorously elusive rites. These videos, visions of a dispassionate voyeur were all make-believe. on the other hand autoerotic asphyxia has a history embedded in masculine sexuality and in tillage too. At least by the early seventeenth hundred it had been noted that hanged men repeatedly developed an erection and flat ejaculated while strangling, and sexual asphyxiation became a treatment for impotency.

The first half of of recent origin Gravity unfolds in a strobe-lit indigo cavern of adolescent boys enraptured by dint of the droning pulse of an androgynous vocalist aligned in fuck-me heels and snuggle black latex pants. The music moderates time while Larsson's camera lingers above the inelegant swell of teenage crotches, klutzy hand gesturings and pimply faces. The striplings are plebes in a masculine netherworld, their material substance language straining with repressed sexuality. Larsson staggers out a doomed fantasy of unrequited have affection for while fetishizing the implements of eroticized hanging as fashion accessories: a carabiner, a pocketknife, and level white athletic socks, which, like the shotgun in a Chekhov play, inevitably return

Our protagonist is a geek He wears cargo cutoffs, a button-down shirt, ancient tennis shoe and sagging white sock At the bludgeon the magnetism of the androgynous performer is total, on the contrary unable to possess this percept of desire, the boy opt for the routine and goe abiding-place to jerk off. Life at domicile is as much a fantasia as dancing below the strobes; the boy's imagination displaces sexual worship with a ritual of instruct-and-obey guidanceed by a master/father avatar. The avatar demonstrates standing upon tippy-toes--a "stress position" familiar to those who torture for a living--then gently presse the boy: "Can you do this?" With the camera focused upon his white socks, the stripling struggles to balance as the avatar numbers off seconds. Then, lifting the couple feet in the air, the avatar inquires: "Can you do this?" He defies gravity; his face fuses into self-gratification that is unmistakably tempting. Following upon as best he can, the male child stands on a chair and, tipping it backward, answers the challenge lay to him. His feet swirl arhythmically not upon the ground. Tragically flailing at manhood on the contrary unable to surrender his virginity, he sacrifices himself.

readys discourage representing eroticized hanging, citing the high risk of imitative behavior. Does of recent origin Gravity gamble art's poetic realism against moral responsibility? If Larsson solely glamorizes deviant but toxic sexual behavior, then hers is a vacant mode of speech like fashion's once trendy "heroin chic." Do we allow this pass as a weakness of art, which rarely reaches into life to trigger tragedy? For now, it may be enough that Larsson has deftly staked without questions that are almost certain to find self-incriminating answers.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group