ISSUE 06: On Masks
Mask and Other Objects for the Noh Dance. Ryūryūkyo Shinsai (Japanese, active ca. 1799–1823).
Woodblock print (surimono); ink and color on paper. 8 1/16 × 7 1/4 in. (20.5 × 18.4 cm).
I don’t remember when the decision was made to make masks as the thematic point for the October issue. I guess I thought it would be appropriate timing, or at least a little funny. I did know that I wanted to co-edit the issue with the artist Max Guy, who has been obsessed with the theory of masks and maskmaking for as long as I’ve known him.
He took the concept and ran with it in more practical terms of theater, drawing on the Japanese tradition of Nō: in which one mask represents an archetype of a character and, throughout the play, an actor can embody multiple archetypes or events as the mask is switched. But is it as simple for the writers who masquerade as the critics?
A friend who saw the show without prior knowledge of Smith’s work believed she had arrived late and missed a performance. There is always a sense of potentiality in Smith’s shows: the feeling that something has or will happen in this space. Of course something has; it’s called an install. But it is undeniable that Smith’s shows share many qualities of a set.
The clown nose is considered the smallest of masks, and mask performance is a way of turning your entire body into your face—meaning, you turn your entire body into an expressive instrument and communicative tool…Like a neutral mask covers your entire face and it’s supposedly neutral. Or, another word is “harmonious” or “balanced.” You see what that’s like to move with no psychology, no past, pure presence.
A snapshot, like a sculpture, is a discrete set of elements enduring in time. Consistent and varied photo-documentation reanimates form, cheats stagnancy, even death. One plans and poses a photograph, but the result of their effort can never be entirely predicted. Within Rosso’s practice, photography serves less as a means of fixing the sculpture than a means of returning it to variation. Rays of light, extension of shadow, and flecks of dust all inform the final result. Such aberrations contribute to the living quality of the photograph.
The solo exhibition Ensemble dissembles the controlled, crafted identities of the artist and the institution through mimicry of the master and the master copy. As such, artist Mira M. Yang presents a reconstruction of disclosure and disguise that begins and ends with multiple propositions. Is translation, as a gesture, fundamentally a masked matter of progression, of evolution?
No one expects the tourist to understand properly, but “it is precisely these misdeliveries that can lead to new understandings.” The term is akin to metaphor and translation, both of which carry something across. Within Japan, Nō travels by transmission, deliberately and in secret, from teacher to heir; outside it, mostly by misdelivery.
In the art of Role Playing, there is a level at which imitation is no longer sought. When every technique of Role Playing is mastered and the actor has truly become the subject of his impersonation, then the reason for the desire to imitate can no longer exist. Then, if the actor seeks to enjoy his own performance to its fullest extent, how can the Flower not be present?