Textual Poaching - Samson and Delilah

Artist's Statement

I chose to use Klaus Nomi's Samson and Delilah aria mainly because of his persona - he donned the mantle of a complete and utter "other", and his music comes from that perspective. Having been born as an ethnic minority in a largely racist country, and growing up as a Mormon in a largely atheist country, it has been easy for me to relate to the outsider's perspective. I also decided to use visuals from Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love in order to complement the Nomi song as it is a film that champions the role of the introverted outsider. Both of these texts speak from a similar viewpoint, and I tried to create a comparison and suggest intertextual links between these two works that I admire deeply.

Klaus Nomi's otherworldly persona.

Nomi was a social outsider due to his sexuality, which he manifested visually in his bizarre appearance and theatrical stage performances. Despite his strangeness, he was still a classically trained singer and had an excellent ear for music, as shown in his performance of this aria - it is something of an anomaly on his pop/new wave fuelled LP, and stands out as a nod to the classical masters - the artists that went before him. I find it particularly beautiful, and decided that rather than cutting it up and producing a garish "remix," I would recontextualise the piece by placing it alongside images in a pseudo-music video format. I hoped that this would change the meaning of the piece and highlight the aspects that I can relate to. I followed the example of Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake by taking fragmentary moments and letting them run together, rather than telling a narrative. I feel like this pushes the focus towards the music.

Although I am not as extreme an outsider as Nomi, I can sympathise with his position and can appreciate his efforts as an artist. In my home country, I was a racial and religious "other." This was a central part of my identity regardless of whether I wanted it to be, and I feel as if I have grown into the role. On the other hand, I am also an aspiring artist and I believe in the unifying nature of art - even the most homophobic individual would have a hard time deriding Nomi's beautiful rendition of Samson and Delilah. This is proof to me that the acknowledgment of beauty is a natural, almost primal quality, and that it can overcome the discriminatory viewpoint that some individuals are taught and eventually embrace. This is not to put myself into the role of a token performer, but to give myself hope and an ideal to aspire to in my work.

The people I shared this idea with liked it but didn't offer any deeper feedback - they could draw textual links but I needed to explain the way they related to me, as it related to often unspoken aspects of my childhood and youth, and the overt and covert discrimination I faced.