Anne Imhof’s three-hour performance at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan is overwhelmingly infantile, comically apolitical, excessively pessimistic about the future, and tragically hollow beneath all the hype.
Doom: House of Hope, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, is a Gen-Z adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set on a high school prom night and performed under a giant jumbotron with a ticking doomsday clock.
“We hope, we’re doomed,” the young performers chant as they part the audience in the armory’s cavernous drill hall. “We’re fucked, we’re dead, I think I made you up inside my head.”
The vibe — trust me, the vibe is at least half of it — alternates between a sad school play and a ketamine-infused Berlin rave. Zombie-like teenagers climb atop shiny black Cadillac SUVs where they vape, get tattoos, or just stare into space, looking generally bored.
They are downtrodden by this unfair world, where oppressive adults destroy the climate and take away trans rights. That’s as political as the show gets: tossed somewhere on the floor were a few ripped-up cardboard pieces with phrases like “Help me I’m trans” and “don’t touch my tits.” Surrounded by rings of spectators, they sing out their angst in hymns that recall Radiohead’s whimpering youth anthems, occasionally breaking into Rammstein-style heavy metal guitar distortions.
Unfortunately, what could have been a screwed-up generation’s rebellious scream against the brutalities of capitalism and the murderous ideologies of our leaders ends up looking, feeling, and sounding like a photoshoot for a Balenciaga ad. Indeed, many of these handsome dancers are busier posing and pouting than actually performing.
Imhof’s “cool factor” is a core element of her success. A former bouncer in Frankfurt’s nightclubs, she still has a keen eye for the young and beautiful. She received international attention — and the Golden Lion top prize — during the 2017 Venice Biennale, where she unleashed Doberman Pinschers into the German pavilion as her chic, pale cast performed beneath a glass floor. Some of those performers reappear in the Armory piece, notably Imhof’s longtime collaborator and former partner Eliza Douglas, who’s also a real-life Balenciaga model.
“We hope, we’re doomed,” Imhof’s languid company laments, refraining from any direct political statement. Luckily, today’s youth couldn’t be more far removed from this glum vision of disaffection. Gen-Zers are not afraid to fight for justice, equality, and the future of this planet. They’re anything but passive and apathetic, and they should be a source of pride for the generations before them.
On opening night, the three-hour show was also a durational performance for the audience, made up of the who’s who of the art and performance worlds. Apart from having to be on their feet that long, the audience members were also seemingly required to perform coolness for each other. Two hours into the show, they were visibly yawning and spacing out. Maybe that time would have been better spent at a protest, a reading, or an organizing meeting with young people who are actually doing something to change the world.
Doom: House of Hope, continues at Park Avenue Armory (643 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through March 12. The exhibition was curated by Klaus Biesenbach.
Thanks for this honest account and reflection. Keep it real Bishara!
Thank you for this review. We need to be honest about trite pseudo political work in a world on the brink. Making overtly political work asks to be challenged in this way. Good job.
It sounds like one of these Saturday Night Live sketches.
https://youtu.be/323v_FtWqvo
Lol! Yup!
Dear Mr. Bishara
Congratulations on the review. It was published. I have some notes.
Clearly, you have never been at a ketamine-infused anything because, first off, you would know that ketamine is not a proper noun and therefore does not need to be capitalized and second that Ms. Imhof’s piece resembled nothing even close to a Berlin rave on any sort of drug (except perhaps MiraLAX?). And, speaking of things you compared Imhof’s piece to—a bad Balenciaga ad? Have you seen a Balenciaga ad? Did you see DOOM? At best it was a KOHL’S catalog. At best.
I left DOOM a bit flummoxed that a work could be so out of touch not only with the world but with itself and with its own making. But then on reading your review, which lacked any substantial critique of the work in question (the clock having no real relationship to the action of the show, the massive set being almost entirely unrelated to the action, the structure of the work having no meaningful relationship to the content—to list but a few examples of things you could have dissected), it seems that “out of touch” is simply par for the course.
To say that pouting is not performing speaks more to your straight male privilege than it does to anything Imhof is bringing to the drill hall.
And, before you go shaming the audience for not having spent their early March Monday night “protesting,” “reading,” or “organizing with young people”—please, show us your diary—you set a high bar sir. I wonder if even you come close to it. With such standards for weeknights, I’m fearful to get to the weekend with you! Let alone a holiday!
Instead, how about we just settle for: “We might have more fruitfully spent our evening seeing quality art made by an artist and not something ‘art-directed’ by a hired firm?”
Shakespeare’s “She speaks, yet she says nothing,” we will reserve for Ms. Imhof. It’s simply too perfect, too apt.
For you though, I think we will have to go with, “(your) wit’s as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard.”
“Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished”
-Sam Roeck
Hi, Sam. You’re right about lowercasing ketamine. Thanks for catching that.
I wish in a world that the issue was Ketamine, a horse tranquilizer, versus “k”etamine. Would that would solve so many problems. Like, don’t worry, your teenager is in a “K-hole” versus a “k-hole”. That makes it so much better and gender/pronoun appropriate perhaps. Which is the most important. Not about disassociation. I’m a middle aged gay white man so I know I’m part of the problem. Nobody cares these days what I went through, the issue is I’m old, which is unforgiveable in youth movement.
This show was terrible. Listless. Pointless. A long drawn out L&G soliloquy. The cars stupid, this german woman is a Frankfurt (?) club promoter who has captured the international art world without saying anything relevant. I guess she wears leather pants nicely
I wish in a world that the issue was Ketamine, a horse tranquilizer, versus “k”etamine. Would that would solve so many problems. Like, don’t worry, your teenager is in a “K-hole” versus a “k-hole”. That makes it so much better and gender/pronoun appropriate perhaps. Which is the most important. Not about disassociation. I’m a middle aged gay white man so I know I’m part of the problem. Nobody cares these days what I went through, the issue is I’m old, which is unforgiveable in youth movement.
This show was terrible. Listless. Pointless. A long drawn out L&G soliloquy. The cars stupid, this german woman is a Frankfurt (?) club promoter who has captured the international art world without saying anything relevant. I guess she wears leather pants nicely