The Dork and Contemporary Art
May 2004

I’ve been forming this theory in the past year or two on the issue of people who we might call dorks. It looks to me as if there’s a certain split in the art world in particular, but also contemporary American culture in general, which can largely be explained in terms of dorkyness. This isn’t a generational split, nor a split that runs along the fault lines of different media or different disciplines, nor is it a split between different movements or “isms” even…. It exists in the arena of attitudes, personalities, approaches, and most importantly, reasons. It’s pretty hard to put your finger on, but once you’ve got it there, it’s helpful in understanding a lot of things.

Generally, the word dork is a sort of insult. People don’t aspire to be dorks, it would seem. What, exactly, constitutes a dork though? In all seriousness, it’s not the type of word which is easily definable; it’s something that builds a definition over time, by consensus. We can see certain characters out there, certain traits in people and in ourselves, and say, “now that’s dorky,” and so those things come to define the word. A lot of words are decidedly more structured and more intentional in their process of being paired with a definition; there’s a pre-established object, action, attribute, or idea, and then a word is assigned to it. For the word “dork,” the thing and the word are both perpetually in flux, and there’s something like feedback going on, where at times, the word “comes before” the thing….

A dictionary is absolutely no help. “Noun, slang. A stupid awkward person,” is one; another says, “A dull, stupid, fatuous person,” another, “A stupid, inept, or foolish person.” There is almost always something laughable about dictionary definitions of slang; you can pretty much expect them to “not get it.” Even if they do get it though, the manner in which information is presented in a dictionary is death to slang. So how do we define it when it is effectively another language? Slang is shifty, it’s perpetually vague; it doesn’t care that the unspoken purpose of Proper English is to minimize vagueness and shiftyness. “Dork” can’t be defined until we accept it on its own terms. Even if dictionaries famously pretend otherwise, language is alive and pluralistic: different expressions function in different ways.

If we can’t directly see something, we have to figure out how to indirectly see it. See it in opposition to something else. What is its opposite? What is similar to it, but not quite the same? As far as what’s similar, we have “nerd” and “geek,” as well as “weirdo,” “freak,” “jerk-off,” “dweeb,” and plain old “loser.” So, we can pick through these and decide how they relate. A nerd is more severe: while a dork is socially awkward, a nerd is just plain inept, and disconnected. “Nerd” also connotes above-average intelligence, which is not a necessary trait of a dork. “Geek” seems pretty close, but it’s a little more repulsive, where there’s often something strangely endearing about dorkyness, a pathos of sorts. A geek is maybe someone who wishes they were cool, but they’re just not, whereas a dork doesn’t care. The others in the list have a weaker connection. They’re not just sort-of insults, they’re definitely insults, which should seemingly be another category, being defined primarily by people using them pointed at someone else, as opposed to anyone ever accepting them as descriptive for himself or herself….

The most useful thing will be to look at what is the opposite of a dork. This is even more vague though, because this is the realm of what is ordinary. Conventional, normal, acceptable, appropriate… average, predictable, formulaic… safe? Trendy, cool, or hip perhaps? What the hell do any of these mean? This is really a large category, and “dorky” is not the only opposite of it, it is just one of many opposites. It does seem to be the most interesting, significant, and poignant opposite though, so perhaps the most telling, in terms of what needs to be opposed in the realm of the ordinary.

But again, what is ordinary or conventional? Obviously it’s different depending on whether we’re discussing people, general culture, or some focused sector of culture, like contemporary art. Contemporary art, as you, dear reader, must surely know, is one field which professes to have no sense of the ordinary, no majority. The idea is that it has a great number of minorities – a potentially infinite number – and no majority. In other words, pluralism. When this idea works, it’s absolutely brilliant, because with no standard set of expectations, no standard language, we can actually end up dealing with each new situation as just that – new. It has its own rules, its own language, and to recognize this is to respect it for what it is, rather than cramming a square peg into a round hole, as they say. But when this idea does not work, it can be an excuse for lazy, boring, irresponsible artwork: we say “it seems to make no sense because it doesn’t fit those old oppressive rules!” when actually, it just makes no sense. A pluralistic stance does not imply that there can’t be crappy artwork, it just changes the nature of an argument over it. Pluralism can also be a dangerous idea, because if we think it’s completely true, we can miss the sneaky bits of a sense of majority which do exist in contemporary art. There are trends, there are things you can and can’t do, there are certain images or subjects or techniques which are sort of “guaranteed interesting.”

How, then, does the dork fit into this? Well, let’s see. A particular artist in the current Whitney Biennial, David Altmejd, makes some of the most dorky, but also the most original and fascinating work I have seen lately. There is really nothing quite like it. It centers around rotting werewolf heads, of all things, except they’re not rotting so much as they are transforming into some crystalline thing, and they’re not werewolves so much as they are fake werewolves…. The piece is pretty confusing at first for just about everyone, which in the context of the Whitney can spell death, with more than a hundred artists to hurry up and see. The fact that it tends to produce confusion is important though. What would it imply for artwork to produce the opposite of confusion? That would be like stepping into something you know, something you’re comfortable with, or have been expecting. Being confronted by something you don’t know is a bit uncomfortable. So you look for a title or description: Delicate Men in Positions of Power. No help there. There is a blurb available on Altmejd’s work, in conjunction with his two pieces in Central Park: “Awkward yet elegant… explore(ing) notions of attraction and repulsion… werewolves trigger feelings of sympathy and horror…. a melancholy, novel example of contemporary sculpture.” So you read this, and then you look down at this stuff. It’s kind of like a dictionary definition of a slang word – it doesn’t begin to describe it. This work is campy, it’s absurd, it’s kind of stupid, but it’s compelling, you can’t take your eyes off of it, like a car crash, but not like a car crash, because it’s so obviously fake, constructed.

There is a tension in Altmejd’s work over the unresolvable questions of intentionality. In the section where there is an entire werewolf body, for instance, we tend to think at first about natural processes of decay. We’re seeing dead flesh rotting, which is a process that just happens, given the proper circumstances. Also, we see some areas of the body crystallizing, like frost forming in a freezer, again, a natural process, a growth. But these crystals aren’t growing, and we don’t simply know this because it’s an artwork in a museum, we can clearly see that they have been intentionally made by someone. And the quality and application of the hair – another growing thing - is also clearly manufactured. It’s undoubtedly wig hair, and crudely stuck on; if anyone needs further convincing of this distinction, they can note the large glass box displaying two sets of false eyelashes in little boxes, labeled “brown” and “black,” the same eyelashes someone stuck on these heads. Indeed, for the entire installation, there is a sense of display – no one could think this setup just happened – someone arranged it: the heads and the body are laid out in an orderly fashion, on low-table-height platforms. There are quite a few small birds in the piece, who are pulling things around on chintzy gold chains… did they arrange it? Probably not, since they’re just as obviously fake and cheap as everything else, little forms, with dyed feathers stuck on with gobs of glue. No one could believe this piece as what it initially appears to be; a viewer, in a way, gets to be in on a joke by debunking all of these “claims” so easily. And it’s a very dorky joke, not a classic knee-slapper; it’s something much more uncomfortable, perplexing, and mildly disturbing.

There is seriously nothing in the world – the art world or the world in general – quite like this thing. And there probably shouldn’t be. There’s something sickeningly wrong about it, only slightly neutralized by the comically blatant fakeness of it. It is dorky in how counterintuitive it is, how misguided it is, how confusing it is, how elusive it is, how stunningly original it is, and how unabashedly bizarre it is. These are mostly negative attributes, but they come to function as positive somehow – and that trick is perhaps the most amazing of all.

So what’s the other side? The anti-dork. I can see a couple of shining examples in this same show. If a dork makes an uncomfortable and vague point in a strange and counterintuitive manner, then perhaps the opposite is to make a predictable or pre-established point –or no point - in a showboatingly clever and decidedly trendy manner. To put that into simpler words, a dork isn’t trying to please anyone, and an anti-dork absolutely is. In the worst cases, there is a situation of trying to please someone in one way, but then pretending to try to please someone in some other more intellectually acceptable way. Kind of like when a hooker is called a companion; it’s a deal to begin with, but then part of it is to act like it’s a different kind of deal. Case in point: Assume Vivid Astro Focus. The blurb on the wall outside of this installation makes great claims for the “generosity, collaboration, and multiculturalism” in the piece, which is “unexpectedly aesthetic” and “provoke(s) unique immersive multisensory experience(s).” The writing has a very serious, quasi-corporate tone to it; it seems to be arguing preemptively…. So, supposedly it’s got this social message to it, and, if it’s unexpectedly aesthetic, then it’s got some sort of raw, scrappy, noisy feel to it, which ever so smartly disguises how beautiful it is. So if I go in that room, and I don’t see any of that, I start to feel like I must be stupid, like I’m perhaps not cool enough. That’s the kind of smug attitude this installation exudes. It’s a bunch of hipster fluff, really, but even without the wall text, I get the idea that if you’re in some in-club, you “know” it’s so much deeper. There’s that simple kind of irony to it, that very safe level of self-depreciation, so completely transparent that it doesn’t really function as irony at all: the somewhat goofy way the figures are dancing, the out-but-in-again retro feel, the pseudo-naïve disjunctions in scale and composition. The whole thing translates as this: “I know I look like the coolest shit there is, but notice how I make fun of myself. I’d like to assuage my guilt over how fucking arrogant I am by emphasizng that I’m fallible, and I don’t think you’re smart enough to notice that it’s totally on purpose.” I find this piece insulting, as well as vacuous and pretensious. There are folks who enjoy this piece, certainly, for reasons I’m not seeing perhaps. Or perhaps it’s just that they want to feel cool, and in on something, and standing in that space makes them feel that way. I suppose there’s nothing terribly wrong with that. Being a bit of a dork myself, I think I’m disinclined to seek such things, or perhaps not trusting of them.

So now we come to this problem with pluralism. If I’m a dork looking at artwork, what I find worthwhile will have certain qualities: awkwardness, randomness, lack of concern for trendy devices, a weird sense of humor…. What about someone who finds different qualities worthwhile – and for perfectly valid reasons? Am I saying that they’re wrong and I’m right? - No.- So how can I say what I’m saying at all? Why bother arguing for something if I can accept a contradictory argument as equally valid? These questions point to certain assumptions we tend to make about art criticism and essay-writing in general. It’s a mistake to say that it’s a search for facts, although it is tempting to say it, based on the tone and structure of arguing we almost always find in this sort of writing. This is not a search for facts, it’s a search for an arguable opinion which supports or illustrates our beliefs. There is a hope that the argument can be convincing, but to convince is not necessarily about right and wrong, it could be about choice. It seems that more would be at stake if an argument is a matter of right and wrong, of facts. I would argue for the opposite though. If an argument is actually over right and wrong, it’s nothing more than a correction of someone’s misunderstanding – the correct answer already exists, it’s predetermined, so nothing is at stake. If an argument is a matter of convincing, the answer doesn’t exist until we make> it exist by choosing to agree (or not to agree). If you ask me, there’s a lot more weight to that. It allows you to actually be responsible for what you believe and what you choose.

This is all getting much bigger than art, or dorks, or the implications of pluralism. But then perhaps it’s not. Contemporary art sometimes seems like the least useful, least important of all human endeavors. But in some ways in can be very important. If the things artists make, and what people say and feel about those things can come to demonstrate a certain kind of interaction, and a certain way of placing value – indeed, creating value – isn’t that potentially important for culture/society in general? And again, being potential doesn’t imply weakness, it implies strength. Of course, it’s only something that people might care about, if something convinces them that it’s worth caring about.

When art is worth caring about, it’s usually emblematic of something in our culture or our world which is also worth caring about, and it addresses it in a way which couldn’t occur by any other means. Otherwise, it’s probably just fluff. The reason, as I see it, that we should give a shit about the idea of the dork is that there’s this correlation between a dorky approach to things and truly novel and innovative ways of addressing things that matter. So, how does Altmejd do this? Some aspects of it are very difficult to verbalize, but that in itself is part of it. The notion that here and there, we come to a phenomenon which doesn’t quite fall into our usual ways of understanding/ explaining/ categorizing is quite important in itself. Also, the fact that we can recognize what a werewolf is – and it’s a fictional phenomenon - and then we can find ourselves concerned that these ones are fakes – that they’re represented as something other than fact - is a very complex idea, very interesting, and rather comical. And there’s a real creepyness to this work, which gets you on a visceral level: here you are, standing in front of this head, in some ways similar to your own head, but it’s disembodied, and someone has put it up for display… is it meant to be admired? What is its connection to all this other stuff? There is a certain logic to the arrangement – but unfortunately, the head is decaying… is that part of the logic? It’s very tragic – but in a foolish kind of way – so is it doubly tragic, and if so, does one cancel out the other? In other words, are we being tricked? What’s the status of a pathetic situation once you conclude that it has been pathetically fabricated?

For the other work mentioned above, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, I would argue that any such implications or feelings are entirely the viewers’ projection. Standing in that room, I began to think of what the imagery light and sound are for. Did someone decide on them, consciously or unconsciously, because they are about something? Anything at all, I mean – it doesn’t have to be some profound social or psychological insight, on any level. It could be the simplest of things; it could be the artist just liking those images. I don’t think it is about that though, or anything worth paying much attention to – which is funny, because it effectively grabs you and shakes the attention out of you. All it’s about is playing into a certain hipster subculture, which has nothing to do with generosity or community, as the wall text suggests, and everything to do with elitism. I feel like if I were to find any kind words for this piece of artwork, they would be pulled out of my ass and driven by some secret wish to be included among the ranks of the hipster – a secret wish I really hope I don’t have, because I’m a dork, and pretty happy about it. Thank you and good night.