Once again, I've left myself little to no time to write this entry. Today is even worse than
yesterday, as I have a mind-altering hang over, and I just woke up.
It's 5:30 pm.
To be fair, I was up earlier this afternoon to go see Tappo's wife's dance performance at the Oulu museum. (Tappo is the aforementioned Yoda of air guitar, who, this morning at 3:45 am, was still playing air guitar with us in the basement of the 45 Special rock club here in Oulu.)
Tappo's wife, named Pirjo, is doing a performance in the museum five days a week for over a month. The audience is limited to six people. It was an interesting piece in which, after feeling each of us up individually for a couple of minutes, she danced around inside a frame of broken glass and interacted with a giant pile of white shoes. The performance seemed to me to be about identity and the body ? how our bodies both limit and define ourselves. And of course, it reminded me of air guitar. (Can I think of nothing else? Well, I am in Finland, after all. What do you want from me?)
So, speaking of air guitar, last night's qualifying round for the world finals (at which I was a member of the "esteemed jury") was top notch. Not the best I've seen, but there were some very good performances.
There was a transsexual from Berlin who called him/herself “The Punisher” and performed in a kind of laced up body suit, occasionally cracking a whip (the punishment, I gathered) and ended the song by setting his/her air guitar on fire ? literally. It must have been some kind of flash paper or something, but it went up in a giant ball of flames that I think ? based on the after-smell ? must have burnt some of his/her hair (in addition to the air guitar).
There was also a guy from Oulu who competed last year named Eero "Oulun oma poika" Ojala (no idea what that means or how to pronounce it), who came out in KISS face makeup with artificial hands that flew off after the first few bars of his Alice Cooper song, "Feed My Frankenstein." I liked his enthusiasm so I gave him a 5.9.
The official results are posted here.
It was all very high performance art, not unlike the post-postmodern dance performance I witnessed today. Air guitar is really just performance art anyway. Art Forum agrees. But really, it is, like Pirjo's dance piece, about creating an identity (ie, the "rock star"), defining and exceeding our own physical limitations, and ultimately, forging something out of nothing.
In other words, air guitar is the most minimal art of the minimalist art movement. Frank Stella, Donald Judd, and Richard Serra would be proud, I think, to judge or even compete in an air guitar competition.
In the meantime, I'll keep waiting for someone to play air guitar to a sixty-second excerpt of John Cage's piece, 4'33".
Maybe Austria's "Le Freak" (a truly insane person, who without a doubt is the reincarnation of Brian Jones, pictured below) will decide to forego his Hendrix song in tonight's finals and opt for Cage.
I just realized that today is my last blog day on Powell's. Tragic! I wanted to report on the outcome of the world finals!
Alas.
Well, if you want to keep up with my air exploits, you can always read Vanity Air.
Rock on and thanks for reading!
? BT