Theory of the Gimmick by Sianne Ngai

Author:Sianne Ngai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

FIGURE 6.12

Sometimes the gimmick intrudes to draw attention to the aesthetic consequences of its own intrusion. In Golden Lager the hand enters from the frame’s bottom corner to emerge once again out of a circular opening of a sleeve (Fig. 6.13). The ring of this opening is echoed by the stripes encircling the sleeve, as if to underscore that the hand has broken through multiple frames. The hand dips a finger into a circular glass of amber liquid positioned to fit perfectly in the circular corner of a beveled marble table, right at that corner’s outer edge. As if to once again mimic the gimmick’s brazen act of self-assertion / insertion and its specifically pictorial consequences, the finger dipped into the encircled space constituted by the glass of liquid appears transformed by having entered that smaller frame. It no longer looks like a finger but an amber-colored shape. Tiny bubbles cling to it, like smaller, similarly encircled miniature worlds. Meanwhile, two fingers on either side of the one plunged into the encircled space of the drink remain in physical contact with the rim of the glass, underscoring both its materiality and penetrability as border. Through these recursions, Golden Lager makes us alert to Rødland’s gimmick as a transparent form surprisingly capable of producing enigma and even contemplative immersion.

FIGURE 6.13

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