Reena Spaulings

by Bernadette Corporation

Set in post-9/11 New York City, Reena Spaulings was written by a large collective of writers and artists that bills itself as The Bernadette Corporation. Like most contemporary fiction, Reena Spaulings is about a female twenty-something. Reena is discovered while working as a museum guard and becomes a rich international supermodel. Meanwhile, a bout of terrible weather seizes New York, leaving in its wake a strange form of civil disobedience that stirs its citizens to mount a musical song-and-dance riot called "Battle on Broadway." Fashioned in the old Hollywood manner by a legion of professional and amateur writers striving to achieve the ultimate blockbuster, the musical ends up being about a nobody who could be anybody becoming a somebody for everybody. The result is generic and perfect -- not unlike Reena Spaulings itself, whose many authors create a story in which New York itself strives to become the ultimate collective experiment in which the only thing shared is the lack of uniqueness.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, New York

216 pages, Paperback

First published July 8, 2005

About the author

Bernadette Corporation, the New York artists’ collective, founded in the early 90s, whose oeuvre spans fashion, literature, film, and installation.

The author of this origin myth is most likely Bernadette Van-Huy, but individual identities are obscured. She discovered her “element” when she moved to Manhattan at the age of 23 and began to organize parties with her friends: “We thought of McLaren, Westwood, and Warhol as our parents... Mostly, we try to realise a fiction that we prefer to reality.”

As the name suggests, Bernadette Corporation plays with ideas of commerce and subversion. Over the last twenty years, it has pursued authentic business ventures while using avant garde tactics to undermine its own brand. This first UK retrospective is both maddening and fun.

Mannequins are positioned throughout the exhibition, wearing “reconstructed” outfits from the corporation’s fashion line, launched in the mid-90s. One wears a “pink nylon bustier dress” with a “black mesh capelet.” The latter is a mini cape, which channels both vampiric nurse and fallen nun.

“BC” – the corporation’s logo – was part of the 90s cross-over culture that married high fashion with art. It seems unclear whether their bid to subvert consumerism from within is simply another way to be cool. This is post-post-modern: pastiche and fragmentation but with a nod to political seriousness.

The 2003 film Get Rid of Yourself, a response to both the G8 Genoa protests and 9/11, is condensed here into a parody of a block-buster movie trailer. Shots of Chloe Sevigny, the poster-girl for washed-out 90s “whatever” subjectivity, are spliced with shots of bleeding protestors. Sevigny is smoking a cigarette, blasé. The soundtrack is thunderously melodramatic, and serves to shatter any hope of sustained concentration.

This is not a retrospective in any conventional sense because everything has been made anew. The black, slick, hard structure that houses the corporation’s various projects is site-specific; it is designed to feel like an airport in which incitements to buy collide with jarring music and discordant lighting. The desired effect is achieved; it is difficult to stand inside it for too long.

More mannequins upstairs bear testament to the D.I.Y trash look of sex-shop meets sportswear meets punk… references abound to the extent that all are cancelled out. This is an everything and nothing aesthetic, which wants it all ways.

Reviews

[A Templeton · Rating 5 out of 5]

some thoughts:
1. painting as genre devise, or ekfrasis as vessel, is genius
2. premise of 'problematising authorship' seems strangely passé today (this book has aged) but like hindsight understanding this as coming to terms with new sets of conditions. 'new york' becomes the cultural output model that sets the terms for narrative in the anglosphere , artworld in particular, globally.. um and this novel is untouched by smartphones, just touched by the internet. how can the refraction have been so intense before this? (I wonder, young), current conditions are like beyond accelleration
3. as a didactic exercise: failure
4. wondering at the true compositon of the pool of authors. it is paradigmatic of the art world to have this young girl, white girl as the universalised subject (as it is in novels, image culture). do I care about reena? there was much too much theatre in the end for me to...
5. I guess I ended up wondering who the posturing was for, if that audience has vacated
6. ham-fisted doubling of maris and reena?
7. sex moves the novel on at so many junctures. it is the only point that it has this feeling of actualising, of being in the body. also the 'reena prepares' chapter; we have a body. the strongest thoughts are on the body. also the storefronts and the gallery, but mainly the body. the 'society' sections are like flipped lacking hysterical
8. the fucked collective vision of MFA graduates
9. have done no research into this. apart from the BC wiki page
10.

[Ayler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really don't know how to rate this book... Apparently like 50 writers contributed to it, and IT SHOWS! Really made me think about an author's narrative grip.... like you can really just tell when a new writer jumps in even if there style isn't so different, but the world they are explaining is just not the same. Anyways... I really found most of this to be a hard slog and took me a while to read as there was no real plot, and much of the writing was (intentionally) hard to focus on and scatterbrained (not in a relatable way). In saying that, there were some really funny and sweet moments. I would say, read 20% of this book

[Chase Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

twisted lil ting this reena!

[Jack Kelley]

Unfortunate that this is quite boring, as it is people I think quite highly of talking about subjects I find quite interesting. At the end of the day it’s better to just read Tiqqun or Jane Austen or something.

[Rowley]

I've been meaning to read this for ever. Thanks for the reminder Nina!

[Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my! Anyone who has ever lived in New York in the last 10 years must read this book! Anyone who loves postmodernist fiction must read this book! Read this book.

[Tingting Wei · Rating 5 out of 5]

a collection of small contradictory aphorisms
/realities of nyc

[Michael]

I like this the most when there is at least a sense of a plot to follow, when the imagery is simple and beautiful, and when the writing is about sex. I could have done without some of the philosophical ramblings — I want to say they were off topic but the “topic” of the book is pretty loose to begin with. Sometimes it’s obvious and distracting that a new writer has appeared, but given that apparently the whole thing is written by 150 of them, it’s not as often as you’d think. I really enjoyed the first half, then it gets a bit too abstract and rambling for me. But some of the passages really are beautiful. Chapters 7 through 10 I strongly recommend.

“…his lower legs and feet were so nice to look at greatly due to their conjunction with the rest of his body and in that they jutted out of what reminded me of a young deer’s legs: they were so long and straight that they gave the impression of a youthful awkwardness, of a still-growing, and of ligaments and knobs. He seemed to have soft skinny thighs, and from there - his ass, torso, shoulders, arms - his body became more that of a mature horse, sexy and shank-like. But if his lower legs and feet were a frank edifice, they were the grounding to a top that was in constant sway - like a tall plant or beanstalk. Up and up, his body became pure emotion, less and less straightforward, more and more confused, shy, conflicted. By the time you got to his head, it was all penduly and bobbing and his hair like a piece of forgotten grass.” p70

“I am hard, like a puzzle. My stuff should be harder, but probably it’s still up to the task. Reena makes her entire body mouth-like. She doesn’t really fuck as much as eat, which I don’t have a problem with. To each her own abstraction, I say. So Reena’s eating with her whole body and pussy, and I’m timing my thrusts with her big gulps. Lord knows what would happen if I slipped out of rhythm. Something would break for sure.” p81

[Em Davenport · Rating 3 out of 5]

very boring at times, hard to follow (i understand that's the point), but it alienated me when it would switch perspective and story. i found it hard to in-take what i was reading because it shifted so much.

regardless jadore bernadette corp and of course felt very seen by all the niche art-side popculture references. my favorite chapter was 6, it was the one i didn't want to end. also loved the karl lagerfeld and reena interaction. i enjoyed what he had to say, felt it to be the most insightful section.

definitely thought this would be more revolutionary than it was, perhaps it needed to be 2011 when i read it. moving to NYC soon. right of passage reading.

[Caleb Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

maybe i'm just dumb now but i think the book fails in its attempt to problematize 'meaning' of coruse its doing this as a critique but it doesnt leave a gap, there is no tension in 'meaning' or the reader's understanding of some lacunae... things go together in loose connections not strong ones, although some chapters (the chapter about bodies, and the Karl Lagerfeld cameo, specifically) work better than other. And more or less it's quite dated. It's quite an impossible book, if you're into that sort of thing.

[sanni · Rating 3 out of 5]

i saw eric reading this book on the bus close to when we met. he told me a little about it and it sounded interesting. a few weeks ago i was bored at his house and asked if he had a book i could borrow and he asked if i wanted to read something weird. i said sure and he gave me this one.

it’s definitely very weird, interesting, chaotic. sometimes boring even in the most chaotic parts. 3.5 stars, i think i would like it more if i dreamed of moving to new york.

[Ayanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was SO excited for this book but I genuinely hated it. Just thought it was absolute garbage. Luckily it didn’t take very long to read, but I wish I’d never come across it. Delivers on absolutely NONE of what it promises. And I say that as a person who loves both New York and postmodern fiction dearly. Sigh.

[Rebecca DeLucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading RS is to gawk after all of its it pigs & where a conclusion feels more like metabolic shock, halp

[meow · Rating 5 out of 5]

like the pool when the city goes to wash... dregs mix with gossip and purges... metropolitan pastiche that goes schizophrenic along the way... this might sound heady and conceptual and it is, in a poetic Oh-okay-we're-changing-character-and-place-and-scenario-randomly way, but it's also very fun

[Aeven · Rating 5 out of 5]

yas

[Anika · Rating 5 out of 5]

best new york book ever

[Odelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

still need to process but certain parts of this are just plain brilliant and then certain parts are not . But admittedly i can never really hate a book about new york

[Jonathan Woo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A glorious, scrambled up book written by like 50 people about life in NYC

Special to me bc I also bought it in NYC

My type of book although I can’t say it’s for everyone

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I remember pyromania, Pennsylvania, geraniums, gymnasiums, head shops, hay rides, hand jobs under the stairs, under the dim, distant stars."

"She gets to France. Thank you Marris. Right into Paris. From some previous trips and letter-writings she knows some people there, but nobody with that kind of heavy passion she is currently looking for. All clogged with style. She loves not speaking much French and starts calling everybody "pussy," man or woman alike. Everybody loves that and keeps inviting her to drinks and meals and underground steam rooms. She figures she's got some talent after all, talent for something she doesn't know what it is."

"'I don't want any friends. They won't know how to treat me. How to touch me. And if I have a friend, I'll need to be touched. And in the right way! Don't just jab at me, friend, GRIP me. Keep it on there nice and firm. Careful not to tickle m' hide by stroken too lightly, and don't vex m' flesh muscle-meat by a lot of un-introduced jabben/grabben.'"

[nina f · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book a lot. It's written by over 60 different authors - a collaborative novel. Sometimes the changes in style are noticeable from one page to another, strands of the storyline, like a hurricane that destroys new york witnessed by the protagonists while trapped in a high-rise building in Manhatten, are never followed up on, which doesn't do any damage to the story. A lot of celebrities (fictional and non-) are met and hung about with (Karl Lagerfeld, Vincent Gallo etc.). Because of this and other reasons the novel reads like a wish-fulfillment dream of a hip but sickly teenager. Reena Spaulings is also the name of the gallery space run by the Bernadette Corporation in NYC.

[Jac · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is written by an artist collective! and is weird and awesome and so different from anything else and can't decide what it wants to be and is so much the better for it.

[tessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

weird

[Oriana]

whoa, this looks totally bizarre and amazing