Jesse Reding Fleming
The Company, Los Angeles, USA
The shadowy terms and conditions of control form the central premise of Jesse Reding Fleming’s wordily titled video, Methods of Invisibility: Shades of Gray (2001-09), and his eponymous exhibition at The Company. The years that mark the making of the piece fit squarely into that dark period now consigned to the ashbox of history known as the Bush Years, in which control and security were manifested as extraordinary renditions, enemy combatants were free of the the Geneva Convention’s restrictions and good old-fashioned torture (known by the Newspeak alternate term, enhanced interrogation) was handily sanctioned. It’s unlikely that the members of secret torture teams would have worn identifiable uniforms, preferring to carry out their mandates with the accoutrements of authority without any symbols identifying their position. One can almost imagine a grey-uniformed interrogator boredly clicking his fingers on the electroshock machine.
Wearing a grey uniform without insignia of his own, Fleming traveled across America in an unmarked police car. Methods of Invisibility documents (with plenty of post-production flourishes) the trip and the reactions of the people who crossed his path during his transcontinental trek. At times confusingly cutting to light snowfall backdropped with the night sky, the video’s pacing drops into a strange kind of humour as it speeds up and slows down according to when Fleming is being observed by passers-by. During one extended scene at a rural petrol station the video speeds up at triple-speed, until someone glances or stares at the unmarked cop car – it then slows to an ominous crawl. No one seems to be able to stare at it for very long. At the pump in front of Fleming’s, a man nervously pats his pockets as he fills his car, staring as the numbers click up on his pump, all too casually glancing over, once, then twice, at the unannounced and unidentified authority figure.
The pacing of Methods of Invisibility, as well as a few noir-ish touches (such as a two-image overlay of Fleming’s twitching eyes and the rapid movement of the highway), add a necessary humour to the video. While this may only prompt nervous laughter, it prevents the work from coming off as too self-serious and overdetermined. In the opening scenes, Fleming enacts his own dictates of control with explanatory texts. They flash across the screen over a distant shot of the car driving along dirt roads. The text begins with a simple declaration of the project (redolent of Chris Burden’s texts accompanying the objects left over after his performances from the ‘70s), but it goes too far in telling us, in rather dated theoretical terminology (‘spectacle’ and ‘signifier’ get handily tossed about), how we’re supposed to feel about Fleming’s project. The text engages in the sort of control of meaning which it appears Methods of Invisibility – with its shadowy figures of dubious authority – is meant to undermine.
Besides this heavy-handedness, the experiment is frighteningly successful; aside from nervous curiosity, no one seems to question Fleming’s mimesis of authority. The casual glancers never seem to intercede or question, their quiet acceptance echoes the controversial Milgram experiment, which measured how people acted when encouraged by an authority figure to torture an innocent. People overwhelmingly obeyed. The authority figure in that experiment, a stern lab-coated biology teacher, also wore grey.
Andrew Berardini
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