In Read/Watch/Listen, Artforum asks contributors to share three pieces of media worth paying attention to. Here, Fall River-based artist Harry Gould Harvey IV shares his choices.
01: READ: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
I’m always thumbing through Finnegans Wake. I like its cyclical format and the sheer amount of historical references. Dublin’s Phoenix Park, rising from ashes, three cops, and something about two girls about to kiss. The boss is always coming in: HCE aka “Here Comes Everybody.” Sometimes I sign things in heteronyms or pseudonyms like HCE; instead of HGHIV, I’ll write Harry Charles Earwig VII in guest books or sign artworks in verso. I’m having a joke with myself and James Joyce, I’m Harry Harvey to the 4th generational spin: so HH4 and JJ or *8,8 IV and *10,10 having a laugh together on the cosmic plane!
02: WATCH: Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man (1995)
You know, I don’t usually watch movies because I’m super sensitive, but I’ve been trying. There are some movies that I like and then watch over and over. I was hesitating between choosing Dead Man or The Third Man (1949). Dead Man ultimately made more sense because Johnny Depp plays William Blake and one time, when I was swept up in consciousness at the Newport Jazz festival, I saw Laurie Anderson screaming in a thunderstorm and I happened to be wearing a bucket hat, and some guy was convinced I was Johnny Depp from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas although I looked more like Dr. Gonzo. But it was just me: Harry in a hat! Anyways, the whole film has this death-walk, name-mistake, American spiritual violence thing. But you know, The Third Man was a close second ‘cause Harry Lime in postwar Vienna has this spy-name logic that I like. Harry Harvey sounds a little like Harry Palmer, the character who, while being abducted in one of the movies from the eponymous spy series, said “Watch my bananas!” in an espionage Homage to Catalonia (Orwell), but makes me think of a different Cattelan (Maurizio) with some sorta mistaken identity involving paranoiac, surreal paperwork.
Also funny to me because on the subject of mistaken identity, I just installed my work at the Kunsthistorisches Museum next to Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish Baroque painter, who some people confused with Paul Reubens aka Pee-wee Herman. Rubens, Reubens, American comedy, +(e) (the infinite) saintly painting, but a wildly different archive.
03: LISTEN: Judee Sill, The Donor (1973)
I picked Judee Sill because I saw she was also chosen by a fellow artist, which reminded me how much I love one of her songs: the track titled “The Donor,” which sounds like the hymn Kyrie Eleison, a phrase I often meditate on—it’s Greek for “Lord, have mercy.” Hildegard von Bingen wrote a Kyrie Eleison song too, and Simone Weil writes about affliction, attention, grace, and mercy with a severity and mysticism related to that exact term, so when I heard it in the song it made me ecstatic. There is also an opium thread in the song that interests me: Frederick Law Olmsted’s mother died from laudanum, an opium preparation, and Judee Sill died from an overdose involving opiates and cocaine. Olmsted gave America public parks and inside that history is maternal narcotic grief. The poppy flower, the opium trader, the generational traumas that ripple out.