an arts & culture magazine for discriminating smart asses
Nesseth in N.C./Photo: Hbee McKee
HOW ARTIST LYNN NESSETH SCULPTS TIME AND SPACE
I came to know Lynn Nesseth while rehearsing and performing together in an aerial work of Jill Menard’s. Lynn hastened to remark to me, “I revere the title of ‘dancer.’ I dance because I am a dancer.” As I became more familiar with the larger scope of Nesseth’s practice I began to note evidence of a singular vision that enables her to make one bold mark at a time with her very own brand of pluck. I can only describe her as dexterous. At her hands the artistic process and evidence thereof returns to the body. The heart of Lynn Nesseth’s conceptual work, as perhaps of any that so foregrounds bare gesture, finds its best expression in simple verbal description. She functions as a kind of storyteller, and we as audience have the option to help keep this alive by witnessing how it affects us, remembering it as best we can, and then passing it along to another.
From a lengthy list of her works’ titles, remembered expressly for this review in handwritten lettering of sturdy whimsy, the artist asked me to select five that most piqued my interest. Even in the object of being interviewed she turns things auratic; only a partner or party can complete the experience. I cannot help but sense she purposes to provide clues to a treasure map leading, reflexively, back to ourselves. A body generous in this endeavor, she gives also to herself. Her works invite us in with subtlety and grace, but pull a detournement as she takes on the role of subject almost with more delight than is seemly.
I invite you, reader, to consider each digit of the human hand in this, the digital age, and to entertain my conceit that the five works I selected relate to each. Lynn Nesseth has expressed to me her affinity with archaeology, her own ambition to dig deep. We may further the project of thorough investigation if we but try.
Thumb: Opposable, therefore distinct from other fingers, from other creatures. Power, authentic or sham, exercised through our ability to grab tools, even to alter our destiny. In Lynn Nesseth’s work, ‘Giving Haircuts’, she sidestepped business as usual. No corner beauty parlor evoked she! Asking her participants to put their heads completely in her hands, Nesseth took over as auteur. For Christophe-Yanne LeGall-Scoville, Brandon Shane Huffman, Jeremiah Felsen, Sasha Gomez and a personage known simply as J.C. the artist intended total transformation. The hairs have since grown, and the only evidence lies in ephemeral memory of the involved parties. It strikes me as rather cheeky to ask this of another, to work in such a fleeting medium as live hair, and then to let the tale of it settle where it may. People get up in arms about their tresses. Keep it covered, keep it short, keep it gone. Keep it from the obeahwoman.
Index: Mill around; check out some live music, man; drink beers; be entertained. In the Lexington Avenue Arts and Fun Fest of Ought-Eight, though, Lynn Nesseth found a platform to play hooky from playing hooky. Held every August in Asheville, North Carolina, that year’s event found Nesseth donning a silver cape and loading two scepters with hand-twisted tinsel crowns, no two alike. She bethought of herself as a ‘Mystic Crown Peddler’, and moved from the alterity of spectator to a place of some weight. For her crowns were many and heavy, forcing her to ply a way forward slowly but slowly. She commanded a wide berth. Evidently Nesseth attracted primarily children, and I would wager that her counterpoint (of pace, of garb) instructed them well. What held Lynn Nesseth’s message, precisely? That we hustle with very little forethought; you too can be regal; even the fringe needs prodding. Discussing her actions as very few can, the artist informed me that her cloak’s color, silver, works as a kind of hypercolor. She stated this as immutable fact, and I charge you to consider it well. Look up from your monitor at, say, the moon. Or think of the elemental properties of metal, conducting electric impulses. Nesseth’s live art piece tells me that we all of us possess our own compass, and that we may indicate whatsoever direction we choose.
Bird: ‘Bimbo Attempt’ found Ms. Nesseth stuffing her cleavage and pitching her vocal cords much too high to some males of her acquaintance. She took pains to say nothing serious or independent. Nesseth hoped more to satirize her gender than that in combination with her blonde hair, as I at first suspected. The result of her science project? No one batted an eye or apparently considered anything out of order. Her experiment seemed to bear out how females blend in best when presenting the seemingly impossible combination of busty (read: adult) and helpless. Squeaking like a little mouse, looking like femininity personified, she was so status quo. Am I alone here in wanting to flip some brothers off? If it wasn’t so funny I might feel tempted.
Gianni Motti/Photo: Hbee McKee
Ring: Say A wants B wants C, and that B has already secured D. B, Nesseth, invited the others, males all, to join forces with her in a benefit performance as Rickshaw Stop Dance Collective. Foregoing the standard of scrupulous monogamy, as well as the delineations of public and private, she collected a harem of her very own (Thanks Virginia! We’ll take it and run.) and put it in the service of art. Apparently the group-in-residence made a nice purse, if there was some confusion afoot. I doubt any malice of Miz Lynn, but she forges ahead in such an honest vein that clearly it takes some adjustment to collaborate with the gal. Lynn Nesseth did not hesitate to juggle three (relative) intimates, or doubt that some interesting effects would play out in so doing. I would guess that a high concentration of chemistry does well when funneled into constructive outlets such as the stage, in fact. Nesseth possesses enough chutzpah that I rather fancy imagining her up against a Henry Miller or Charles Bukowski type. The shyster would get finessed to bits.
Pinky: And so we come to Lynn Nesseth in a pink belly shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Gianni Motti Lover.’ Nesseth shies from positioning herself as mere object, and such a top sans foundation garment surely defies that. We see that she contains worlds, however, and traverses the unexpected. The collaboration of Nesseth and Motti has grown piecemeal, beginning with a meeting at California College of the Arts’ Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, where Motti delivered a lecture as a Prophet of Deceit. Nesseth describes an immediate connection. They later met by pure serendipity in the grotto of Emma Kunz, in Wurenlos, just outside of Zurich. The meeting, straight out of Providence’s playbook, stupefied them momentarily. The incredible happenstance seemed to merit action of some kind, and they agreed to begin collaborating. One stipulation they decided upon: to keep operations covert until the press sought her out. This time is now. Their process and its products have to do with honoring whom they imagine themselves to be at any given moment, especially in relation to each other. They fully intend to remain as ambiguous as possible, and to give great credence to the private as distinct from the public. This puts me in mind of Maira Kalman, in The Uncertainty of Being, on keeping a secret as a delightful prerogative. This had never occurred to me before reading Kalman’s book, and the extent to which Nesseth/Motti do so astounds and inspires.
Lynn Nesseth intends to make us think for a moment, of the blast that we may have. She accomplishes this partly by having adventures herself. She will dangle a riddle before you, leading by turns back to the beginning. Surely beauty dwells in the eye of the beholder, she remarks, taking us by the hand only to let it go. In this way she does much to restore the lost to being…lost.
FLABmag is a monthly arts & culture magazine for discriminating smart asses.
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