Abstract
In this chapter, Juuso Tervo discusses the educational aspects of American artist John Duncan’s artistic practice. Known for his controversial Blind Date (1980), Duncan’s works often address topics related to sex, death, and violence. Challenging the interpretation that Duncan’s works stand as means to represent sexual and religious trauma, Tervo proposes that Duncan’s repetitive utilization of total darkness and intense noise resonates with Calvinist emphasis on actual experiences of faith over practices of representation. Tervo sees Duncan as an educator who invites the audience to cross through the threshold between the known and the unknown without any guarantee of the outcome. While this may pose a challenge for hegemonic knowledge, Tervo argues that it can also reproduce the very hierarchical relations Duncan aims to disrupt.
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Notes
- 1.
As Duncan retrospectively described the situation in an interview, “The decision to leave the United States came from a sort of push-pull situation between ex-lovers, close friends and their associates on one side of the Pacific making a determined effort to block any and all public displays or references to my work after failing in their attempt to send me to prison, and audiences on the other side sincerely interested in listening to what I had to say on what BLIND DATE as well as my work in general – was about” (Peralta 2007, para 42).
- 2.
Indicative of this approach is how Linda Frye Burnham, the editor of High Performance magazine at the time, left Duncan unnamed when explaining her decision not to publish anything about Blind Date in 1980. See Burnham (2014).
- 3.
While Duncan’s early involvement with experimental music scene in LA and his later career in sound art is an important part of his oeuvre, in this essay I will focus mainly on Duncan’s performance pieces and installations. An informative overview of Duncan’s career in sound art can be found from Bailey (2012) as well as from John Duncan. Work: 1975–2005 (Duncan 2006).
- 4.
Interestingly enough, Yardumian (2012) recounts: “Driving home [from the morgue Duncan] found he was unable to weep, he was beyond weeping” (para 10).
- 5.
One of them was artist Paul McCarthy, who also documented Duncan’s works such as Every Woman and the image of him getting a vasectomy for Blind Date.
- 6.
By “repressed sexual impulses,” Duncan refers to William Reich’s The Mass-Psychology of Fascism. Reich’s influence in Duncan’s practice is also visible in his series of works based on Reichian breathing exercises, No (1977), Out (1979), Signal (1984), Cast (1986), Incoming (1993), Gate (1994), and Kick (1991–1995).
- 7.
My understanding of sacrifice is indebted to Rey Chow’s essay “Sacrifice, Mimesis, and Theorizing Victimhood,” in Chow (2012).
- 8.
For example, the International Artist Studio Program in Sweden prematurely terminated Duncan’s residency in 2001 after they learned about Blind Date . Duncan was able to continue his residency after winning the case in court.
- 9.
Ironically, it was the lack of concrete evidence of this act (the audio recording was not considered as such) that made it impossible to press charges against Duncan.
- 10.
As Calvin (2002) put it, human will is “bound by the fetters of sin” (p. 165).
References
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Tervo, J. (2019). Pedagogical Sacrifices: On the Educational Excess of John Duncan’s Darkness. In: Tavin, K., Kallio-Tavin, M., Ryynänen, M. (eds) Art, Excess, and Education. Palgrave Studies in Educational Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21828-7_8
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