Dec. 1-4, 2005
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To rent ‘Slacker,’ $500 for 10 days
Artist’s wooden mockeries of a classic poke fun at Austin
By Jonathan York
Daily Texan Staff
In Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” (1991), the sun sets downtown. Two hipster girls walk off in the glow toward a 1990s skyline that has no Frost Bank Tower for a signature point. Lora Reynolds Gallery, at 300 W. Ave., can’t be too far from where Linklater filmed that scene, and people passing in the dusk on Tuesday can see a wooden painting of the poster for Linklater’s film.
In front of the poster, 32 wood blocks painted to resemble VHS tapes lie on a painted folding table. Along the wall, 12 small wood-panels depict clothes. Each hat, T-shirt or flip-flop (rendered in intentionally sloppy cross-strokes with no defined lines) says “Slacker” somewhere on it. People had sold the clothes on eBay. Linklater did not make these; Illinois artist Conrad Bakker did.
His display, called “Slacker Economy,” runs through Jan. 7, with a reception at 6 p.m. on Dec. 10. It is “an ongoing investigation of a culture formed by consumption and dependent upon artifice,” the press release says. The display also includes a photograph of a wooden cross-stitch at a thrift store. He bought an actual cross stitch, recreated it in his medium, and offered it for sale in place of the original, at the original’s price. This practice is called “shop-dropping,” says Jessica Halonen, the gallery’s associate director.
She points to an oil-on-carved-wood replica of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt’s book “Empire.” Its critique of capitalism fades under the transparent Borders bag wrapping the cover. She says Bakker associates the film, the book and the cross-stitch to derive the notion of a “slacker economy,” a term referring to reuse of goods without reproduction. This copy of “Empire” costs $1,200, but you can buy the book directly from Borders (through Amazon.com) for $13.57. Borders.com and Amazon.com are the same thing.
The videotapes are convincing. If you pick one up — and Bakker wants people to do that — you won’t find it weighs much more than the thing itself. When I did, I thought I heard the tape rattle in its case. I did not want the tape to fall out of its case and smash on the gallery floor. But I was paranoid. The oil paint was sticky against my palm. It was not a videotape. It was a block of wood.
You can check them out, too: a steep $4 for a three-day rental, after which the price climbs sharply. The late fees on I Luv Video’s copy of Slacker might accumulate to a few bucks if you kept it past 10 days, but a 10-day rental of Bakker’s version costs $500. He seems to be saying that art can be assigned the same value as its subject. Until a fixed point, after which art becomes much more valuable.
Despite the boilerplate about investigation and consumption, he’s just making fun of Austin. But there’s nothing better to do. The 8-month-old gallery stands in one of the yuppie projects that have opened at the southwest corner of downtown, those multi-story hives painted like the Villas on Guadalupe with Christmas lights on the balconies and furniture stores glowing along the twilight street.