![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/CYK_MagicFlute.png\")
“The Magic Flute 2017”, courtesy of LACMA<\/p>\n “The Magic Flute 2017”, courtesy of LACMA<\/p>\n
On April 28, Frances Stark’s “The Magic Flute” premiered at the LACMA. For her\u00a0110-minute cinematic adaptation of the 1791 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Emmanuel Schikaneder, she collaborated with several people in the music industry, including conductor Danko Drusko. He transformed Mozart’s original score to be performed by an orchestra made up\u00a0of young musicians aged 10 to 19. Stark’s intention was\u00a0to update the lyrics and take certain parts of the opera to\u00a0make the piece\u00a0more accessible to a contemporary and diverse audience. We interviewed Stark for Sleek 48 to discuss\u00a0the project in addition to her\u00a0past works.<\/em> In the piece, a character likens art making to masturbating. \u201cThe masturbation that was taking place to create any of these dialogues was mutual,\u201d she says. \u201cSo what I discovered in this process was this reality where instead of watching pornography, you could just be having a simultaneous experience with a person. That was a rupture, especially for women, where you could have a safe space and go cruising like all my gay friends from the Nineties. Now I know what that\u2019s about, you know what I mean?\u201d In a way, she feels like the community has moved on from the sort of encounters featured in \u201cMy Best Thing\u201d. \u201cCompared to the promiscuity in ‘My Best Thing’, Instagram can be so much more nastier, and it\u2019s hot.\u201d In her early practice, Stark described herself as a writer, but \u201cMy Best Thing\u201d led her to hand over her authorship to her collaborators. \u201cI just got lucky with these dudes and they\u2019re fricking hilarious. So I didn\u2019t edit that much,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was a wonderful trajectory for me and I think it produced remarkable effects. But now I\u2019m coming back and realising you can\u2019t always relinquish control.\u201d There has been a shift in Stark\u2019s work, which previously centred around autobiographical text and speech elements but has now expanded to include young, black male protagonists and their culture. L.A.-born and raised, Stark has a fascination with all facets of the city\u2019s life, including its skateboarding and rap subcultures. In fact, it was at a skate park where a chance encounter in 2012 led her to meet her muse and fellow artist Bobby Jesus. Following this, Jesus spent time at Stark\u2019s studio and began to participate in her artwork. At first, Jesus was a \u201ckind of model\u201d for Stark, and one that inverted the traditional gender binary between artists and their muses. Indeed, references Sylvia Sleigh, a 20th<\/sup> century figurative painter who replaced women in classical paintings with nude men, are also present in her work. However, Stark\u2019s approach is more conceptual: Bobby Jesus \u201cmodels his life for her\u201d and she \u201cmodels her life for him\u201d. \u201cIt’s fascinating for someone like Bobby, who grew up on rap, to tell me that my work is interesting. The whole thing has been a cycle of educating each other, between my son and Bobby and me.\u201d<\/p>\n Jesus isn\u2019t the surname on Bobby\u2019s birth certificate \u2013 it\u2019s a nickname Stark gave to him. But his influence on her work is definitely real and very visible, especially in her latest and perhaps most ambitious project: a re-staging of Mozart’s opera\u00a0\u201cThe Magic Flute\u201d.\u00a0Partially a homage to the city\u2019s hip hop scene, Stark is reframing the opera through the lens of L.A. rap culture, which was initially intended to be a collaboration with DJ Quik. “It’s gonna be a film,” she says. \u201cStagecraft is not my forte because production is too stressful, and that\u2019s not what I\u2019m interested in. I really love how ‘My Best Thing’ became so easy to spread around the world.” She wants the piece to be\u00a0about exploring the sound of Mozart\u2019s classic and \u201cunderscoring certain parts \u2013 those parts which link to contemporary issues.\u201d Perhaps the most controversial aspect the opera poses to modern audiences is its racist treatment of Monostatos, a Moorish character. Take for example lyrics such as: “Everything feels love’s joys\/yet I must shun love because a black man is ugly\/White is beautiful, I need to kiss her.<\/em>” Or the fact that Monostatos is still played by a white actor wearing black face paint in many existing productions. A further contemporary angle concerns the surfeit of images and their effect on the perception of subjectivity. \u201cThere\u2019s a brilliant opening scene in the opera when the prince encounters a serpent and then the three witches say, \u2018Oh we found you, the queen wants you to see this.\u2019 They then hand him a picture of the princess and tell him that if he can save her then he can have her forever. So they entice him with a sexy picture \u2013 its like Instagram \u2013 and he\u2019s like \u2018I love her, I must act\u2019,\u201d she says. L.A. artist and professor Frances Stark has hung up her cap and gown to listen to rap and rewrite Mozart<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[38,1072,3067,1473,344],"class_list":["post-51487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-art","tag-exhibition","tag-frances-stark","tag-music","tag-sleek-magazine"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nOnline sex and onstage daggering with hype man Skerrit Bwoy: Frances Stark\u2019s work distorts the line between art and life. In a society where expressions of female sexuality are circumscribed and censored, her unabashed exploration of online mutual masturbation, misogynistic hip hop tropes and currently classical opera blurs categories, boundaries and genres. Distinctions between life, medium, work, concept and position seem irrelevant in\u00a0her practice. Her work is a canny analysis of how we communicate and use culture in the 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century, delving into Chatroulette and upending preconceptions about artist-subject relationships and the intimacy of communication.
\nStark\u2019s best known work is perhaps \u201cMy Best Thing\u201d, an hour long film in 11 episodes that premiered at the 2011 Venice Biennale, featuring two animated characters recounting dialogues Stark had with a number of men, including an Italian anarchist and architect in an online sex chat room. The works are remarkable for their banality: the characters speak in internet shorthand, \u201chahahas\u201d abound, and the two fully clothed avatars barely physically interact. Her openness around sex and the unscripted blandness of the chatroom leave the viewer very much removed from the position of the voyeur. \u201cI felt sexually empowered performing in those private realms. There was a compassion and tenderness that was created between me and the other men,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n![\"Frances](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/fs_1988_total_performance.jpg\")
Total Performance, 1988<\/p>\n
\nMetaphors of masturbation play out in the script of \u201cMy Best Thing\u201d, which becomes a rumination on productivity and uniqueness. \u201cDoes pleasure need to result in a product or have a use?\u201d she asks. This also translates to her teaching. One of the main aspects of her pedagogy, she says, is to awaken the joy of reading. “At the University of Southern California, a lot of students thought that the meaning behind an artwork was embedded in it, like a secret key left by the artist that would unlock its secret. Everything can tell you an endless story of what it is and how it\u2019s made and it\u2019s fun to figure that shit out, so I was so surprised to encounter art students who were hostile to enjoy the process of unpacking it,\u201d she says, clearly frustrated.
\nLast December, however, she resigned her position USC Roski where she\u2019s taught for a decade. This decision was sparked by a well-publicised spat concerning rapper and impresario Dr Dre and his Beats headphones business partner Jimmy Lovine donating millions to establish an \u2018art meets technology meets disruption meets hot air\u2019 undergraduate programme. \u201cNo one wanted to investigate or talk about it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a paradox because at the same time, the art market is ever more powerful and there\u2019s ever more \u2018celebrification\u2019 of places like Art Basel in Miami, and at the same time, you\u2019re cutting art off at the root.\u201d
\nWhile Stark was included in the 2011 Venice Biennale, her name is not widely known outside the art world. Her mid-career retrospective, which recently opened at the Hammer museum in L.A., may well change this. However, she says she still feels unsure about her place in the art world. \u201cI feel like I don\u2019t have one, partially because my voice didn\u2019t matter in the 70 million dollars from the tech industry.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/e_fs_2011_my_best_thing_9.jpg\")
“My best thing”, 2011, courtesy of the artist and Marc Foxx<\/p>\nAuthenticity for real<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n
“It’s great that Bobby Jesus, who grew up on rap, tells me that my work is fun to him” \u2013 Frances Stark<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nStark intends to connect Monostatos to a campaign group that Bobby Jesus, a fellow artist, drew her attention to called the Moorish Science Temple of America \u2013 a movement that originated in Chicago in the early part of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century, and which was a precursor to the Nation of Islam and the black civil rights movement. Its founder, Timothy Drew, believed that African Americans were descended from the Moors of North Africa \u2013 hence Stark\u2019s link to Monostatos. \u201cIt\u2019s a deconstruction of American constitution, and we want to use this to make the Moorish character in the Magic Flute an empowered rather than a pathetic and threatening figure, which I think is what the librettist Emmanuel Schikaneder originally intended,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/FRANCIS-1041-37.jpg\")
Frances Stark, courtesy of Todd Cole<\/p>\n
\nHowever, the production received a major setback when DJ Quik stopped returning her calls. \u201cI had a sincere desire, as a person, as a thinker, and as an important artist in L.A., to have this conversation with Quik,\u201d she says. \u201cQuik being non-responsive was a major heart breaker for me, this serendipitous thing of someone reaching out from another world at first, then it dying down.\u201d\u00a0The production is currently\u00a0on hold, while Stark\u00a0rethinks her approach, however, funding is secure.
\nNonetheless, Stark’s sabbatical from her teaching may be far from over. At the moment, it\u00a0seems as if the artist has reached a new beginning by\u00a0making work about a culture that, while very much indigenous to L.A., doesn\u2019t usually cross the boundary into the mainly white art scene. To whit, a white female appropriating hip hop and entering the territory of black storytelling is in a sensitive position indeed. Stark is unabashed, and she\u2019s striding forth into areas previously regarded as off-limits for female visual artists.<\/p>\n![\"Frances](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2001-Agonizing-yet-Blissful.jpg\")
Agonizing yet Blissful, 2001<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"