Carlin Wing
Mo Abbas (EGY) vs James Wilstrop (ENG),
Tournament of Champions,
Grand Central Station, New York, 2006
Pigmented ink print surface mounted to acrylic
and back mounted to Dibond. 70 x 57 inches, edition of 7
“But the human need for shelter is lasting. Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art.” – Walter Benjamin
There, framed by splendid blue walls, in the center, we will find the champion. The crowds sit around the great glass stadium: blurred, Baconian, moving or focused, seated, static. They look upwards at a sign. It hails them, hits them with something — nothing material, but they feel it. They turn, to stare, to ask, to wonder: willing subjects. Situated in our center, focused, in strong white letters: the champion’s name. BEAR STEARNS. The lights frame its austere capitals: brighter, shinier than the lesser advertisements that flit around throughout. A background, flooded in dollar-green. So immaculate, we blink. They have merely sponsored this event. Merely. But the photograph is about the sponsors, not any absent players. The lacking competitors do not matter. This is presumably the finals, with the swarming of crowds, the blazing of lights, the general agitation. We don’t wonder about the strategies employed, however. The real players, the ones out-competed each day when they rise and sleep, are seated, still. It’s unlikely they realize in time this event is about them.
Trains stuffed full of their husbands, colleagues, bosses, children, wives, objects, subjects, sellers, and buyers, of greater and lesser social significance, comfort, wealth: those people speed by underneath. Branching, expanding lines of flight. Outside of this room, the exception sits; its cups jingle, gifts fall. We feel trains rumble below as acutely as when others brush past outside. Where they go matters little, it is not here. Some knew about the tournament, how each round becomes increasingly difficult, exciting, full of tension. How this is the apex of them all; the release. Others of them? They never cared.
The present players, dressed in sweatshirts, jeans, leather jackets, button-downs, khakis, long-sleeves, stripes, hats, more sneakers, wait patiently for the game to begin. It will begin, but it has also already begun. The concrete walls and the great brass chandeliers speak to the ghostly predecessors in absolute spectrality. Some strange version of the game, its simulation, will come, will appear here: a simulacrum of real competition. We stare at it, the viewers look on, and BEAR STEARNS meets our gaze directly. This is a pensive image: a space of indeterminacy between action and passivity. Permanently on our toes, waiting.
It is a photograph of occupation. Because it hints that the name on the wall is temporary: not the natural victor, nor the rightful focus. That an incalculable many are unphotographed, we are doubtless aware. That our responsibility to them exist, here, it is axiomatically refused. Because it invites us to wonder why we are stuck behind this impassable barrier; why it hides in plain sight. The walls will not be broken down, nor will it matter. A proximity partition of movie-theater, waiting line, airport, bank stretch dividers. A stadium, enframed in this cathedral of capital, itself a former mini-city. Bought to intimidate, to make products and people move. We are frozen. Our effort, desires, joy, sorrow at the outcome of the game will follow us home. Dissipate. There are no referees visible, we remember that they were never any good and all of them never existed. We realize how unequal the situation is. How rigged the winner was from the start, because it runs the game, does the numbers. But there is, in the end, not a telos here.
Instead, there is openness, there are ruptures: a gesture. In 2008, shocks will engulf the victor. Defunct, confused, swallowed whole. Multiple victories will be surpassed by horrible defeat, and we will shake from tremors that follow. Some will not survive. Some only in the barest life. We imagine this world, and remember, and ask why we are still not the victors? We point to something *else*. This photo is premediation: opening the space for new potentials, for new desires. It affects us: it says another world is possible. The white letters will transmogrify, the watchers will stay the same, and the rules will crush them, heavier than before. Because J.P. Morgan is the sponsor of the squash Tournament of Champions today. Will we sit and watch?
