Woo woo, p.7
Woo Woo, page 7
The ghost of Carolee Schneemann opened her mouth wide and a light shone out from her tonsils. From her mouth, a nature documentary was projected onto the curtain over the window. It showed the albatross, sitting on a ground nest and preening its feathers. Every few seconds the footage would warp and the clip would restart from the beginning.
‘Those birds, right there, have no natural predators, said Carolee. On an atoll in the South Atlantic they make ground nests and sit on their eggs. Then recently, I forget the intricacies of why, perhaps global warming, but the mainland mice got hungry and the sea levels retreated enough for them to run to the island, their feet wheeling wildly over the rocks, and when they reached the birds they barely broke their stride as they swarmed the nests and ate them alive.’ She turned to face Sabine. ‘And the birds didn’t move an inch. Didn’t fly away. They sat there, apparently unaware they were being eaten by the hordes of mice that hung from their necks by their teeth.’
Each word she spoke made the film blink from colour to black.
‘Can I pat the bird? I need something to calm down. I’m shaking, can you see? I can’t hold my body still at all,’ said Sabine.
‘Compose yourself,’ said Carolee.
‘But I am the bird, right? That’s what you’re telling me,’ said Sabine.
‘Actually, child, if you would listen to me at all, the man outside is the giant albatross,’ said Carolee. She pointed her finger at Sabine. ‘And you’re going to be the swarm of mice.’
‘Can he hear us? Perhaps we should whisper,’ said Sabine.
‘Where is your hunger?’ said Carolee.
‘Interesting question,’ said Sabine.
‘Where is your bloodlust?’ said Carolee.
‘I don’t like to think about violence,’ said Sabine.
‘Why?’ said Carolee.
‘It’s grotesque. It’s distressing,’ said Sabine.
‘But you make gothic skins,’ said Carolee. She gave the bird to Sabine, who unwillingly took it. As soon as Carolee left the room, Sabine put the bird on the floor and it toddled over to the potted monstera, turned in a circle once and then sat.
Carolee’s heavy footsteps hammered back down the hall. She kicked the door open wearing the skin of Expectant Mother. The skin featured a huge swollen belly and a plump, rosy face. Carolee had run into trouble pulling the mask over her head, and the face was now positioned so that she was looking out of the mouth hole. She squeezed each breast, squirting milk at Sabine.
‘Stop! The milk is off,’ said Sabine. It was a mistake to fill those huge breasts with cow milk, only to be told, by Constantine no less, that human breasts don’t make any milk until the child is born. As if it were common knowledge. As if being a woman would let her in on the intricacies of milky tits and so forth.
The bird stood up and chattered.
‘Is this not thoroughly grotesque? It reeks. It’s vaudeville,’ said Carolee.
‘You’re misusing her,’ said Sabine.
‘This, my dear child, is nightmarish,’ said Carolee.
‘Birthing bodies? The ripe firmness of a pregnant belly? These are all very fine, artistic, gorgeous things,’ said Sabine.
Carolee felt around the bottom of the belly, unzipped the stomach and then stood with her hands on her hips, her feet apart in a wide stance.
‘Be careful,’ said Sabine.
Carolee lifted her leg onto a chair, and a doll the size of a cat fell from the puppet, bounced, dangled, then swung from the short umbilical cord.
The albatross flapped in fright.
‘You can pick him up now, he’s scared,’ said Carolee.
‘That’s my only pregnant puppet,’ said Sabine.
‘Anyone, and I mean anyone, who concocted this, this baby dangling here … What is dripping on my feet now? What am I feeling?’ said Carolee.
‘Amniotic fluid,’ said Sabine.
‘Ugh,’ said Carolee.
‘Seven hundred and fifty millilitres,’ said Sabine.
‘Anyone who thinks it’s gorgeous has a rabid spirit inside them,’ said Carolee.
‘I don’t see it that way,’ said Sabine.
‘Just let in the idea that artists, through their very nature, are violent,’ said Carolee.
Reacquainted With My Limbs
—Lulama Wolf, 2023
Later that night, only five days out from her own launch, Sabine stood in the middle of the crowd at Freya’s highly anticipated sculpture exhibition, (Im)Possible Offering: Reactivity & Justification.
The sound of clinking glasses and the hum of voices filled the stark front gallery space. Cecily and Freya had converted a former church next to the old psychiatric asylum into one of the largest commercial galleries in the country. They had remodelled the area behind the pulpit, installing a bright red glass bar, and the pews had been repurposed into an installation in the foyer.
Although Freya was Cecily’s partner, Sabine had dressed for Cecily’s gaze, and hers alone. Keeping her hair glazed to one side was a clip covered with tiny candy-coloured pearls. She carried a minuscule faux-crocodile-skin handbag that fitted only her phone, one key and a credit card. Ruth told Sabine she looked Parisian. Sabine told Ruth she was being stalked, and Ruth said she loved his nickname, understood it was terrifying, but also thought it was a kind of levelling up, career wise. She held Sabine by the ears and told her to focus on herself and on having fun, and to forget the fear of being stalked. Sabine agreed, then slammed two wines.
Freya’s art practice had remained unchanged for the past twenty years. It consisted of everyday objects presented in farcical arrangements. One sculpture comprised four stacked bricks surrounded by a circle of clean sand. Another featured an erect metal drainpipe vomiting a satin pillowcase. When she looked at Freya’s pillowcase, each rumpled line in the fabric rippled and rolled across the sculpture, gathering momentum as it cascaded over Sabine. Seven thousand dollars for a handful of river rocks in a commercial blender. Sabine squatted down next to the sculpture. It felt sentient. It was as if the blender threatened her. As if it would turn itself on and send rocks hurtling across the gallery. This piece of art, if given a little taste of an electrical socket, would destroy her. Remarkable. Six thousand five hundred dollars for an inverted iron funnel supporting a lone green ostrich egg. Precarious. Sabine almost wept. Divine. The fragile egg sat on top of something whose whole function was designed to work. It was a symbol, Sabine was certain, of socialism. Or Marxism. A liquid modernity thing. Sabine accepted a third wine from Ruth with both hands.
Within half an hour she’d managed to step on someone’s foot. ‘Sorry,’ she kept saying, long after the person had moved away. Sabine continued her circumnavigation of the art but was ambushed by Cecily, who swept her into a hug. As they embraced, Sabine was softly caressed by the many layers of fabric that washed from Cecily’s body to hers.
‘You need to see this before I forget.’ Cecily rooted around in her bucket bag, feeling either side of her metal drink canister before pulling out a flyer for Sabine’s show. It was an image of Sabine hanging from a wall near the highway overpass. F*ck You, Help Me, was printed across the top of the flyer in bold sans serif.
‘The star?’ said Sabine.
‘It’s an asterisk. Remember we went over this, there are rules in public advertising. We cannot advertise the word fuck.’
For months they had gone back and forth about the styling of the title.
‘I thought we agreed to style it with a v instead of a u. As in, Fvck,’ said Sabine.
‘I’m sorry, no. Fah-Vuck is what I heard in my head when I read it like that,’ said Cecily.
‘I am unhappy about the asterisk,’ said Sabine.
‘Just focus on the overall tone of the flyer. Isn’t it so unbelievably bleak and peak-industrial?’ said Cecily.
‘I thought we were going to use one of the images that Constantine took of me in the garden. You said the nudity would have to be censored otherwise,’ said Sabine.
‘Those photos didn’t work,’ said Cecily. ‘On any level. But see how we blurred your whole body out? It’s just a kind of misty, grey area now.’ She grabbed Sabine by the shoulders and squeezed her. ‘But listen, not long until it’s up on these walls. How do you feel?’ Her tongue darted out as if ready to drink in the answer.
‘Good,’ said Sabine.
‘How so? Can you articulate it for me?’ said Cecily.
‘It’s all very exhilarating.’ Sabine puffed out her cheeks and tossed her bag from one hand to the other. She stepped back, catching her voluminous sleeve on someone’s vape and almost breaking the tiny bird bones of their art-loving body as she shook herself free.
‘Apologies,’ she said.
‘This is roughly the same number of people that we are expecting will be at your opening,’ Cecily said. ‘So mentally prepare for that.’
‘I’m not worried,’ said Sabine. She blinked slowly. On all levels except emotional she would be fine.
‘So many artists disintegrate during the week of their show,’ said Cecily.
‘Do they?’ said Sabine.
‘For some reason, even though it is a choice and a privilege, the whole process proves utterly destabilising for them,’ said Cecily. She raised her eyebrows towards Freya.
Freya approached Sabine, beaming. ‘Don’t let all this intimidate you. I won’t forgive myself if it puts you off.’
Freya wore their usual Issey Miyake blacks and Air Max sneakers. From their left ear dangled one brutalist earring. ‘There’s so much hype about Help Me Fuck You,’ said Freya.
‘She knows! Let’s not freak her out,’ said Cecily.
‘There’s Samantha!’ said Freya. ‘Samantha, over here, you’ve got to meet Sabine.’
‘This is the widowed collector I was telling you about,’ said Cecily, visibly excited.
Freya inhaled deeply. ‘She thinks your work is post-narrative.’
‘The highest compliment,’ said Cecily.
A woman in a friar’s habit swished over.
‘Sabine! I’m so delighted to finally meet you. Freya let me have a sneaky peek at the full digital catalogue, and when I saw it I literally gasped,’ she said.
‘It was audible,’ said Freya.
‘It’s unbelievably stimulating, isn’t it?’ said Cecily.
‘There’s a forgotten sensuality to the work,’ said Samantha. ‘Now, to me, your work actually functions as a sculpture, and I don’t mean sculptural, I mean it’s tangible, visceral, immobile.’
‘Thank you,’ said Sabine.
‘And now that you’re here in front of me, you must tell me about the Fucking Help Me process,’ said Samantha, staring at Sabine’s mouth.
‘You must,’ nodded Cecily.
Sabine tasted bile. The only way not to fall to pieces was to stay where she was, fists full of her taffeta dress.
‘Tell Samantha the insight you had into duality,’ said Cecily.
‘Well, it’s a series of self-portraits while wearing portraits of myself,’ said Sabine. She let go of her dress, lifted her hands to waist height and circled them through the air.
‘The mind boggles. What’s the story behind that?’ said Samantha.
‘It’s about pretending to be something you already are,’ said Sabine. She reversed the initial direction of her hands.
‘Or is it about risk?’ said Cecily.
‘Or is it about being perceived as something only partially true? You’re demonstrating there is a permanent falsity to the selfhood,’ said Freya.
‘It’s about the face and the body and the night,’ said Sabine.
‘Of course it is,’ said Samantha.
Sabine excused herself. She hurried to the bathroom where she locked the door and opened her bag, looking for crumbs of codeine, or Endone. Something. Anything. What if when the widow saw the full exhibition she thought it wasn’t interesting? Or, even worse, what if she thought it was interesting but executed poorly? Sabine checked her phone to see if Constantine had messaged, but there was nothing from him. Where was her husband? She sent him several question marks.
The truth was, Sabine was on her knees for art. She prostrated herself before the altar of art. She spent her whole life in the process of making or recovering from art, and when she wasn’t doing either of those two things she was looking at other people’s art. Art bubbled her blood. Art sliced her open and let the universe pour in. As soon as she passed through the doors of the gallery, or a studio, or even when she opened a book on art history, she felt it fill her. That deep, anticipatory whomping worship. Sabine was reorganised in the presence of great art. Her atoms shuffled and resettled.
Sabine closed the lid of the toilet and sat on it. She held her phone up and went live on TikTok.
‘Hey, just wanting to come on here and discuss Freya’s sculptures,’ whispered Sabine. ‘They are such spooky, obsessive artefacts. Majestic tokens. The concept that Freya’s art is right this moment being sold to collectors, who will lock it away privately, disturbs me. Like, money enforces a separation between the artist and their creation. Do you think it’s a crime that Freya’s reinterpretations are only available for one person? Shouldn’t it be a more prolonged public experience? Let me know your opinions in the comments.’
Motorised_Cooter commented: Once I was high on mushrooms & idk if it was a gallery or an aquarium or what, but as soon as I walked in, the walls turned into oceanic portals to another dimension, and so I sprinted out of there so weird
JahBlessSelassie commented: Artists are the new mystics
Ruthsexycool commented: Are you in the bathroom? Come out, I’m bored
BiPolarBear commented: Artists are the new art
‘Okay. Interesting comment. As an artist I’m wary of the pressure to market myself instead of my art,’ said Sabine. She touched her ears, smoothed her hair, checked her clip.
MorrisseysFirstWife commented: Off topic but are you wearing a nine hundred dollar dress in a recession?
Ruthsexycool commented: Let me in I’m at the door. I’m literally banging
BiPolarBear commented: Pookie is in her luteal phase
Ruthsexycool commented: The wine is running out
Sabine stared at her screen. Only fifty people. As she waited for more to join, the number dropped to forty-one.
‘Oh sorry, I think I have to go,’ said Sabine. She stopped the live stream.
Sabine emerged from the bathroom and she and Ruth rejoined the crowd. They stood through the second hollow acknowledgement of country by a benefactor of the gallery, who beamed into the audience like a proud parent, their hands shaking as they held notes typed in oversized font. After a smattering of applause from the room, Cecily adjusted the microphone and called her lover’s art profound. Freya thanked everyone for coming, lifted both hands to the ceiling in a victorious pose and claimed that every piece had sold. Sabine raised her glass and committed fully to the chronic and debilitating contractions of jealousy. Ruth whistled loudly. Everyone clapped. Someone somewhere dropped a champagne flute to the polished concrete floor, where it shattered in a shimmering smash.
Sabine found herself stumbling backwards through the crowd, her body propelled away from Freya’s successful exhibition. She didn’t mean to turn around suddenly and edge people out of her way, but when that didn’t work she transitioned into ploughing through them like a barge on a river, not so much pushing people as guiding them out of the way like rubber ducks.
‘Coming through,’ she muttered.
Behind her, Ruth and Freya were remonstrating with the DJ, who had mistakenly stepped on the ring of clean sand around the bricks. The DJ took to the decks in outrage, and played grime far too loudly for the space.
As Sabine approached the exit, she pre-emptively took a breath, preparing to hunker down and bulldoze through the last of the crowd, but Constantine was at the door, waving to her.
‘Go back,’ she mouthed at him. She walked into the tasselled edge of someone’s scarf and inhaled a loud haze of musk perfume.
Wheezing, she made her way over to him. ‘I can’t do it. It’s too much. Can we go?’
‘You want to leave? You told me it was essential that I come. That my presence would make you feel safe and you could enjoy yourself properly. I left work early and stopped by the house to shower first. I thought it would be nice for us to have some fun together at the afterparty—’ Constantine peered over her shoulder. ‘Just ten minutes?’
‘My art is terrible.’ Sabine burst into tears.
‘Is it?’ said Constantine.
Sabine let Constantine steer her out through the double doors of the gallery. They stood in the street. He held his jacket above her head to protect her from the light rain and she gratefully leaned into him, letting him take her weight. A marriage can be scaffolding. It can be a vehicle to leave in.
He told her that her photographs were too weird to be boring, and too well done not to demand serious attention. ‘Am I right?’ he kept saying.
‘I guess so,’ she replied.
‘I think I age twenty years in the week leading up to your showings,’ he said.
‘Imagine what it’s like for me,’ said Sabine.
‘It all gets very intense. The air in the house. All of it. Everything,’ he said.
Perhaps it was strange to see the spectre of creativity riding your spouse like a jockey. Sabine wanted to understand more of his experience of her. She let go of Constantine for a moment while she buttoned her coat and then caught his hand again, desperately, and he allowed himself to be grabbed like this, and she wanted to thank him for the acts of grace he gave her time and time again.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to go to Freya’s afterparty?’ said Constantine, hopefully.
‘God no,’ said Sabine.
‘I’ll dance with you,’ said Constantine.
‘I’m too tired,’ said Sabine.
‘How was Ruth?’ said Constantine.
‘Good, but can you imagine dating someone ten years younger? Lou is twenty-eight,’ said Sabine.
