DESCENDING A STAIRCASE
February 2015
Legend has it that if two lovers kiss in a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, their love will last for all eternity. My husband and I were in Italy last month and I suggested it couldn’t hurt to secure a little legendary blessing by kissing under the bridge. Ever enthusiastic, his response was “We can do better than one bridge! I’ll kiss you under every single bridge!”
“But that’s not how the legend goes”, I laughed. “That’s okay”, he responded. “We can make it a better legend…”
In fact, our romantic adventure evolved as simulacrum, having a likeness to the original, but really a reproduction or imitation of an idea. Ours became a copy of a copy of a legend. French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard on the simulacra suggests “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real”. (1) In this sense, there is no distinction between the reality and the representation; there is only the likeness or similarity: the simulacra.
The simulacra then is not just a copy of some other thing, but becomes its own truth and in our case, our own reality of romance, commitment and to my husband’s way of thinking, the creation of our own legend.
It can feel confusing or even sad to lose a sense of the original or that which is the (perceived) reality, through a distorted representation. The likeness lacks the substance and story of the (perceived) original. However, I take inspiration from artists who have for centuries played with copying the other: at times the simulacra outright counterfeit, at other times a deliberate distortion, parody or criticism, while at other times a commentary on contemporary culture and its representation.
Marcel Duchamp’s extraordinary Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2 (1913) has been parodied and conceptually reinvented in multiple ways as in J. Amswold’s The Rude Descending a Staircase (Rush Hour at the Subway) (1913), or more recently Marion Jones’ Nude Barbie Descending a Staircase (1990). In these works I see that simulacra has allowed for conversation between the past, present and even future. Meaning may be buried or distorted, obscured by interpretation, but perhaps we can be open to what simulacra enable us to understand about how things can change, and even should change. “Traditional forms are also contemporary shaped by the forces of the times in which they are enacted” (2) and something real can emerge from grappling with representation.
Personally, my recent experience of simulacrum involved a lot of kissing under a lot of bridges in soft Venetian light. This in itself reminds me that in the end, whether descending a staircase or riding a gondola, to be responsive to reproduction is a most basic human joy, allowing for delight in the discourse.
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| Duchamp - Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) | J. Amswold - The Rude Descending a Staircase (Rush Hour at the Subway) (1913) | Marion Jones - Nude Barbie Descending a Staircase (1990) |
References:
1. Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra and Simulations." Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed Mark Poster. Stanford University Press, 1998, pp.166-184.
2. Martin, C. (Winter, 1999). Brecht, Feminism, and Chinese Theatre. TDR (1988-), 43(4), 77-85. p.80