Beyond the Genius of the Sea: SIRENS by Steffen Jørgensen, Robert Kjær Clausen, and Allan Nicolaisen @ Christian Andersen, Copenhagen by James D Bowman 3

In the introduction to his book Surrealism and the Novel, J.H. Matthews writes, “Authentic surrealism has always been fundamentally a matter of inspiration, reflected in a certain orientation of curiosity or aspiration, with the artists’ degree of success standing in close relationship to the suitability of form to meaning.” Allan Nicolaisen, Steffen Jørgensen and Robert Kjær Clausen have perfected this relationship in Sirens. Their mermaid corpse suffers the peculiar abjection of post-death objectification as a case of silenced (but vibrant) matter, so that (in this parable that critically echoes the narrative of the systemically problematic—no matter how clandestine—attitudes toward “otherness” brought about by the hauntological reverberations, in our postmodern era, of a blatantly brutalizing heritage) the oral oppressors of the sirens’ drowned-out subjectivities feel free to make—but nevertheless uneasy making—asinine statements about these beings which would (in a world less ennui-ridden, less riddled with disinterested disillusionment) provoke awed wonder instead of mild, ennui-ridden curiosity. These tragic special agents’ underlying awareness of the terrifying implications of the world’s plan-shattering spontaneity acts as a steady thread in an otherwise less-than-stable plot. According to the press release, “The characters in Sirens raise a series of questions about the nature of pretending, posing, and the ownership of their identities when these [identities] are constructed from a palette of media stereotypes” as a lifeguard takes to drinking, a special agent “resorts to rap music.” The remixed tropes that pervade the piece inscribe a stance of bountiful reevaluation onto the surface of the video as a vitalized arena of fractured narrative discursiveness so that trends are called into question rather than reinforced. All of us, as Derrida insists, are (mass-) mediated bricoleurs haunted by our varied and particular horizons; cerebral tinkerers who have to use whatever tools arise around us with whatever hands we’ve arbitrarily inherited from circumstances of culture, capacity, &c. Works like Sirens are crucial fireflies in the poisonous ointment of perceptual homogeneity.