The demise of Spitzer as performance art
March 10, 2008, was a crucial day in the life of Karen Finley.
On that day, the frenetic performance artist was in Albany for a speech to be delivered by former Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer about the Healthy Teens Act, a piece of legislation that would have provided increased sexual education to teenagers in New York State.
Instead, news of Spitzer’s involvement in a prostitution ring broke that day, and the speech was delivered by then-Lt.Gov. David A. Paterson.
That strange confluence of events serves as the basis for Finley’s whirlwind performance-in-development called “Impulse to Suck,” which came to Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center Wednesday night for a two-day run. In the course of the hourlong performance, Finley adopts the personas of Spitzer and his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, to illustrate the essential failure of power politics to deal with sexual and emotional problems on the small or large scale.
Finley began the performance with some illustrated context about the events of March 10, which included several pictures, documents and images of Spitzer’s now-famous head-imploding frown that appeared in thousands newspapers, magazines and blogs following his official apology.
Soon enough, she launched into an imagined speech by Spitzer, in which the former governor (“Luv Gov” as the New York Daily News referred to him) rants about his intention to construct laws “as a way to protect myself from the taboo of desiring mother.”
In Finley’s eyes, Spitzer becomes a tragic figure who is always trying in some way to sublimate his desires and constructing barriers to his own lust that must eventually come crashing down. She imagines his father, Bernard Spitzer, the son of Austrian immigrants, visiting his lofty ambitions on Eliot and thus robbing him of his own.
She spoke of Spitzer’s trip to Buffalo in February, a day before he reportedly met with a prostitute in Washington, D. C.
“Buffalo was my foreplay, my city of arousal,” Finley said. Her voice suddenly heightened to a plaintive pitch: “Oh! I can’t wait ’till I get to Buffalo. Oh, I can’t wait to leave Buffalo!”
The performance was accompanied by a video screen, which projected Finley’s own drawings of Spitzer’s now-legendary frown to suggest that the situation warrants more than the puddle-deep media perspective most Americans ingested in the wake of the scandal.
Along with the deep psychological ramifications of “Impulse to Suck,” the piece contained a heavy dose of the projective humor for which Finley is known.
In the end, Finley’s performance is a brilliant torrent of psychological, sexual and political tension wrapped up in her own intentionally melodramatic (sometimes too much so) and scathingly wordy package. It is powerful because it reveals without mercy the ways in which politics is ill-equipped to deal with emotional or sexual problems and thus wider social problems that deal with sex.
When the piece reaches completion, hopefully Finley will return for something more than two perfectly enjoyable days of foreplay.
Art Review
“Impulse to Suck”
Performed by Karen Finley on Wednesday night in Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave. Another performance at 8 tonight.
