There was a particular silence that haunted Pope.L’s studio each morning when I arrived. The rays of sun would filter through the edges of the sunroof curtains and a vague smell of wood mixed with paint lingered in the air. The fluorescent bulbs would flicker on as I flipped the light switch revealing the various piles of work which grew like mold around the space. Paintings, collages, notes, files, prototypes, models: the studio was always filled with activity. It was an arcane clandestine laboratory of art filled with monstrosities and curiosities alike.

 

        Sadly, Pope.L passed away suddenly last year on December 23. His passing caught me by surprise, and I have found myself reminiscing about the studio ever since. The year and a half working there was a transformational time for me and took me to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It was like being a part of those legendary jazz bands fronted by Ornette Coleman or Sun Ra. There was an exacting desire for both perfection and innovation in equal measure. You had to be solid and flexible at the same time to roll with the punches. The serene silence of the studio was merely the calm before a storm of activity which would soon ensue.

        Galvanizing the resources to pull off Pope.L’s ideas pushed the limits of institutions, fabricators, conservators, and myself. I was learning on the fly, trying to marshal galleries, universities, museums, students, and journalists. The job was like wrangling cats into a dinghy. The work produced was challenging, both conceptually and materially. Pope.L’s work resists easy description or understanding. You have to struggle with it on your own to make heads or tails of the bewildering visions he evoked. He was an artist who took on audiences, cops, politicians, government committees, and institutions with a furious intelligence. He truly believed in the power of art to really change society while at the same time being dubious of art’s prospects.

 

        Great art provokes questions for those who view and experience it, and Pope.L’s art was always provocative. As an artist, his primary concern was language and the control it has over us. He played with language as a material. I will never forget the cards taped to the wall, periodically re-arranged, to display phrases such as “granola, ayatollah, Emile Zola.” Pope.L’s work was a confrontation with both language and society. The work during my tenure at the studio emerged from a creative process influenced by decades of toiling at the fringes of artistic possibility. He often prized failure over success. As Pope.L would put it: “do it wrong and strong!”¹The final result was never just his vision for a work. He made room for chance, spontaneity, and collaboration.

 

        The philosophy towards art that Pope.L embodied was already evident in early performances that confronted the social failings of capitalist society through a dry ironic disposition. Consider a performance like Egg Eating Contest which pushed the metaphor of consumption to its limits. Consuming is conveyed as a violent act. In a satirical monologue delivered by Mr. Poots (one of Pope.L’s alter egos), we hear how this violent consumption ripples out from childhood scraps to institutional violence like slavery and prison. Much like Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings—the original Dadaists—Pope.L wanted to create art that exposed the ignorance and absurdity of the world.

 

        Pope.L’s social critiques became both more complex and nuanced over time. His 1990s performance ATM Piece pushed his confrontation with the contradictions of U.S. society to another level. Standing outside the lobby of a Chase Bank dressed in a skirt of dollar bills while tied to the entrance with a rope of sausage, Pope.L offered unaware pedestrians money. Are the institutions of banking and economics reasonable and necessary as we are led to believe? Perhaps, these monetary rituals are as absurd as Pope.L’s performance. Passersby were confused, horrified, or apathetic. The performance makes the notion of going to a bank and the purpose of banking appear strange. Pope.L’s art flushed people out of their complacency and forced them to consider the uncomfortable truths of our lives.

 

        The main project I worked on for the studio was Missverständnisse—produced at Kunsthalle Portikus in Frankfurt, Germany. Missverständnisse (translated as “misconceptions”) was a corrupted event in the vein of Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Survivor. Missverständnisse had the structure of a game show, but its content resisted that structure in every way. There are times I am amazed that it got made at all. The whole show was a provocation on multiple levels.

        The individual rounds were conceived as grim parodies of very real social issues which existed in Frankfurt. The host proudly wore blackface and grinned with psychotic exuberance. The cast was a mix of hired actors, with one playing the part of an average person alongside other unaware “real” contestants. Even the advertisements were manufactured distortions of what you might see on television. Missverständnisse seemed to encapsulate a kind of capitalist hell—one that had reduced itself down to nothing except for confrontation, corruption, and apathy. Watching an episode of Missverständnisse is like peering in on a Beckett play filled with characters lost in their confusion, despair, and isolation. This formulation was not surprising though, considering how many books by Beckett were strategically placed around the studio.

 

        Pope.L’s last exhibition “Hospital at South London gallery” is a broken and empty recreation of an early performance: Eating the Wall Street Journal. Materials lay scattered about, pieces of the installation are breaking off, and the whole structure appears to be hanging on by a thread. It is a bittersweet testament to the legacy Pope.L leaves behind. The vitality of his past performance has been drained and the ruins are left behind for us to contemplate and consider. I couldn’t quite unpack everything going on. However, after his passing, I was prompted to remember the small moments of time between making art. I remember talking about Videodrome and David Cronenberg. I remember talking about the metal band Scissorfight. I remember talking about Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor.

        As a day would end, I would send a final email to Pope.L, clean up coffee mugs, and turn the lights off. I’d close the door and lock it behind me. Stepping outside, I’d take an exhausted breath and walk towards the Cottage Grove green line stop to wait for the train home. Often, I’d fall asleep at Garfield and get jolted awake at Clark/Lake. For a period, this was the cycle of my life. I’m not sure if I miss it, but I cannot deny the sway the time in the studio had on me. Be well Pope.L.

 

 

John Thomure is a performance artist and writer currently based in Chicago. His performance and writing practices fixate on local art history, ecology, and exploring underappreciated artists and their archives.