joyous situation

In his brief portrait of the unknown and utterly forgotten gay African-American photographer Alvin Baltrop (published in the February 2008 issue of Art Forum http://artforum.com/inprint/id=19329 ) -- whose black and white pictures of the now-lost west-side piers of lower Manhattan (dilapidated, graffiti-covered, rotting structures which served as sexual forest and playground for gay men in the 1970s and 1980s) are haunting -- Douglas Crimp (Prof. of Art History, Univ. of Rochester) mentions Gordon Matta-Clark's intentions behind an "indoor park" conversion of Pier 52 in 1975: M-C said he wished to achieve a "joyous situation".

The expression struck me as a philosophical incantation, similar to Neitzsche's "gay science" or a John Cagian zen affirmation. Perhaps it's the word "situation" which gives it this effect, and here I am thinking of Sartre's concept of "situation" (language, environment, personal history) through and against which the individual lives his freedom. The "situation" is rarely a source of affirmation, and in one's darker moments it seems to become an overwhelming force for predestination along the descending slope. How then to turn it joyous?

The rotting piers, homeless gay youth, furtive trysts, nude sunbathing a breath away from traffic, married gay men shuffling along under the beams, rats, rusty nails, and the clapping of Whitman's waves indifferent to our longings and desires. Achieving a joyous situation seems a mantra worth repeating.

Alvin Baltrop's photos can be seen at http://www.baltrop.org/