More about brid(g)e

Trembling of the Veil: On Guta Galli’s brid(g)e

by Solomon Rino

On March 2018 Guta Galli performed brid(g)e, in which she crawled from 6th and Market Streets in San Francisco, California to the Root Division Gallery, at 1131 Mission Street. She wore a bridal gown, bridal veil, carried a bouquet, and was accompanied by a man throwing rose petals. Her instructions to those who joined her were that if she collapsed from exhaustion and couldn’t continue, that she be carried to the gallery “as if a corpse.”

I watched the performance from London via live stream, and the stream was televised at Root Division during an exhibit and celebration of their 15th anniversary. I was struck by the way that Galli crawled: she remained on her belly for much of the time, erecting herself on hands and knees to cross busy streets, and in the end, to simply continue. The crawl took approximately two hours. Galli was clearly tired and in pain throughout, but persevered, and when she reached the gallery collapsed on her back in exhaustion.

brid(g)e was an epic journey reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s epic poem How It Is, in which his protagonists Bom and Pim crawl on their bellies eternally through the mud: “my life last state last version ill-said ill-heard ill-recaptured ill-murmured in the mud brief movements of the lower face losses everywhere.” While Beckett’s mud is the primeval stuff from which mankind was formed, Galli’s is the literal muck of the street: urine, feces, vomit, hypodermic needles, and in particular, the gaze.

She crawled along Market Street, one of the most populous in the city, in its seediest section, where one often sees European tourists gawking in amazement at the extent of urban American squalor. Her performance was largely met with stupefaction, but also an array of emotions including care, (one stranger decided to accompany Galli, showing where to avoid the most questionable detritus); contempt, (one man suggested that a bride should be recumbent, and a group of men shouted that such activity was responsible for the downfall of American politics); and curiosity, (generally snapshots, and occasional sharing in the shower of flower petals).

I was reminded of Canto III of Inferno in which “the trimmers” who “have no hope of death, and their blind life is so base that they are envious of every other fate” run after a flag in “so long a train of people, that I would not have believed death had undone so many.” In this case the flag is the bride and the trimmers those who live destitute in a society intent on their marginalisation. In brid(g)e, Galli was a beacon of the American politic in the most visceral fashion, by literally staining her white dress in its discard.

However, she did not only articulate the contemporary. The durative aspect of her journey, especially the question of whether or not her body would endure, is indicative of what Walter Benjamin called “pushing the future forward.” It is the role of all great art to exceed the limits of its time. Kandinsky imagined a triangle rotating in space with the artist at its apex and society at an adjacent point being lifted to the artist’s level. While this model is somewhat condescending, it can be said that art exhibits a quality of prophecy, a “weak Messianic power,” or more concretely it anticipates and informs the way that we change.

In this sense Galli is our Cassandra, and as her work is comprised of the future, it will likely take some time for her to be fully understood. In Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon, Cassandra says, “Believe me if you will. What will it matter/if you don’t? It comes when it comes,/and soon you’ll see it face to face/and say the seer was all too true.” Cassandra stands as Galli did at 6th and Market, and the fulfilment of prophecy waits at 1131 Mission. The distance travelled is the “trembling of the veil.” It is here that “bride” and “bridge” are united as the veil is breached not by the groom, but by a rite of passage that exceeds gender and border. Galli initiates rituals of prescience, that “trail the old barbaric works of slaughter.”

Solomon Rino is a poet, playwright and scholar. His first book Deity Men, Rebgong Tibetan Trance Mediums in Transition (Asian Highlands Perspectives, 2010), is an ethnography of ritual tradition on the Tibetan Plateau. His translations of Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti were published as A Wiser, More Beautiful Death (Editions Michel Eyquem, 2011). He was a finalist in the Omnidawn Open Poetry Competition, and a semifinalist in the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Competition, and his plays have been published in Omniverse and Volt. He currently co-edits the literary journal Second Stutter.