Rodney Graham
The metaphor is The Trip. In Halcion Sleep (1994), Rodney Graham's new black and white video, the artist is seen dressed in stylishly striped satin pyjamas, sleeping deeply and blissfully laid out on the back seat of a mini-van. Through the soft glow of the rain-traced rear window, we can follow the path of the van as it travels endlessly down the avenues of Graham's hometown. At face value, the chain of events seems uncomplicated: Graham downed a heavy dosage of the sleeping agent Halcion and, once under its spell, was transported from a motel on the outskirts of town to his home in the centre of the city. The continuous video loop was shot in a single take. The heaving of his limp body in and out of the mini-van (the trip's beginning and end) are not included in the action; 'travelling from the outer limits to the centre' is the heart of this event.
Halcion has an undignified history as the drug of dignitaries. Classified as a hypnotic sedative, it is notoriously addictive; a lesson learned publicly by James Baker, Secretary of State in former-President Bush's cabinet. During the ill-fated trip to Japan, when Bush hurled on the Japanese Prime Minister during a state dinner, Baker became addicted to the pinkish sleeping pill. His obsession was aired in the international press and the effects of the drug became widely known. Halcion doesn't stop at putting you to sleep, but transports you to a place of serene musings on things past. From all accounts, it is a serenity that you ache for. Even if Halcion is addictive, hypnotic, and reputedly the cause of amnesia, its side effects are simply the cost of doing business when your business is peace of mind. On the tongue of a Secretary of State, Halcion suggests power recklessly lilting to the beat of soothing muses, but on the tongue of an artist it is a signifier of visionary liberation. This kind of distinction is an unbearable double standard that further ghettoises the artist's role in relation to the social, the political and other avenues of cultural production. Allowing the artist to be judged by more permissive standards than politicians, or others, is as condescending as it is degrading; it points to the artist as a citizen we already know must be irresponsible in order to make a contribution to society. By this example, the double standard forfeits the chance that a corrupt politician might ever be held accountable .
That Halcion creates amnesia in its users certainly lends it power as an allegory for unmediated radical creativity, and perhaps as an access ramp for reviving meditation on the embattled notion of what it means to be original. 'Proceed as though with amnesia' a young artist chanted to me. Has the artificially induced vision become an acceptable level of reality, and of originality too? Could the reverse be just as true? I am familiar with artists who are schizophrenic but do not take their medication because they are convinced that they are only creative off the drugs; that they possess naturally what others try to inspire chemically. I think back to a passage from The Man Who, a play based on Oliver Sacks' book, when a patient tells his doctor 'I don't want to be cured' and then later, 'I know it isn't you who could rescue me'.
Perhaps Graham is gesturing toward an enlargement of Breton's famous proclamation: 'I believe in the future resolution of the states of dream and reality, in appearance so contradictory, in a sort of absolute reality, or surréalité, if I may so call it'. But how we think about 'absolute reality' has become more complicated, and the stakes are higher than Breton could ever have envisioned. Graham no longer points to Breton's resolution of dream and reality, instead he is that resolution. Sleeping under the effects of the drug, Graham gently bobs on the van's back seat wearing the Halcion daze. The look on his face naturally makes you feel a tinge of envy. The artist is someone transported somewhere else, to a place remote in time and place. From where we stand on the outskirts, he appears to journey toward his self's centre. True, he has given up his faculties, but given them up to a different, otherwise unavailable set. The relationship of artist to audience is made perfectly clear: the softly effulgent rear window hovers above Graham's head as would a thought balloon in a cartoon. Only Graham can 'see' where he is going, leaving us in the realm of hand-me-down experiences, staring into the silently glowing waves of passing lights and attempting to reconstruct where he has been.
