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"The Redux as Redefinition"

Justin Raphael Roykovich

MCMLXXXIX / The Vogue Redux, Part 1. from Justin Raphael Roykovich on Vimeo.

Slide 1: This cinematic essay, MCMLXXXIX/The Vogue Redux, Part 1., is an exploration into how media can shape identities while simultaneously providing a basis for colonized histories for the socially advantaged at the expense of minorities. For this specific project, I work with Madonna’s “Vogue,” a song that helped solidify her stardom at the expense of the young African-American/Latino/Homosexuals who originated the dance of the same name.
I started exploring this notion of how entertainment shapes identity in Gay American through several video works, culminating in this cinematic essay. I centered the video around the year 1989, which played an important role in my own personal history: it was the year Robert Mapplethorpe was crucified in congress; it was the year the Berlin wall fell; it was the year Madonna was on the rise. It was the year when Emperor Hirohito died, relating back to a fascination my father had with World War 2. It was the year that the AIDS crisis was being compared to the holocaust.
Slide 2: Through these experiences both macro and micro, I developed a hypothesis of how I began to look to popular culture, interweaving global and political events with personal milestones, to define who I was as I came of age. Though I do not think that my experience is unique--nor do I think that popular culture has lessened its grip any--for me the way I integrated media into the structure of my psyche left me forever changed.
Thus, I do on screen what was happening in my mind: voguers from Madonna’s video meld with images of the atomic bombings, Jesse Helms becomes a new face for Degenerate Art, and various clips and scenes from music and movies bleed together to form a new narrative. This narrative is based on an age where we looked out to see what was inside, and we held a mirror to entertainment to tell us about ourselves. Yet it is a narrative of a relationship to my own existence, told through a history claimed for capital, denatured from origin, and sterilized for a mass market.
Slide 3: I envisioned a media installation piece where I could rewire the effects of this narrative, where I could validate my own history and breakdown the illusion on which it was based. So, I deconstructed the video and the song, reducing it to specific movements, suspending the dancers in mid-stride. I abstracted Madonna’s face, aesthetically manipulating her beauty to create visual representations of the decay I felt happening inside of me at the knowledge of my own history. I broke down snippets of the music video, so that flashes of movement loop to create a cycle of choreographed cultural imperialism.
Yet I still feel as if I have a stake in this imperialization. I still identify with it, I still remember how much of an influence it had in my youth. How do I, as a white gay male, a majority within a minority, reconcile the fact that a large part of my identity is based on things that are stolen? How do I construct who I am in a world in which opticality rules first and foremost and meaning almost never?
Slide 4: I propose a post-optical solution to how we view things. Using the deconstructionist idea of breaking down visual culture to expose real meaning and by viewing things beyond mere opticality, art does not have to look like a “thing” but instead can display the notions of how our mind views these problems. By exposing flaws in the design, the true nature is found. By eliminating the overindulgence of media, the underlying truth is revealed. (Even sometimes by creating an over-overindulgence.) Through the creation of this work, I have realized that while it is essential to understand how one’s identity is constructed, how we get those building blocks is not always in our control. Yet, it is our social responsibility to explore those constructs and navigate through the illusion to find what is really hidden in the message.

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