JULIA SCHER Julia Scher, Wonderland, 2018 | Page 40

DISCIPLINE MASTERS, 1998
Julia Scher’s 1988 video Discipline Masters is a four-hour confessional by the artist in which she attempts
“to preserve her understanding of [her] life history.” Shot in the artist’s NYC studio during the heatwave of July
1988, the video shows Scher, filmed in close-up, recounting her childhood and adolescent memories, including
moral and physical abuse from her parents, as well as deeply intense and emotional anecdotes related to
moments of deception and humiliation.
Originally cut into an eleven hour long rendition, the film was later edited down to four hours during which
Scher is captured at different moments of the day, in varying quarters of her studio while donning diverse
outfits and hairdos. Brisk cuts and sudden retakes, and the off screen voice of the cameraman – actor and
cinematographer Victor Prokopov – with a rough-hewn editing adds on to the intimacy of the work.
Coy, mis-en-scene, Scher’s somewhat flat narration dead pans her recounting of her life in numerous
sequences, occasionally repetitive, but with details changed or omitted that render the spectator in a state
of doubt, sometimes questioning the veracity of the stories. In other moments, however, Scher’s emotional
connectivity leaves one with the impression of a profound sincerity if not brutal honesty.
The narrative scenes are interwoven with sequences of lip sync, punctuating scenes with raucous pantomimes
of U2’s In the Name of Love. These brief clips were recorded between 1986-1988 and juxtapose a buoyant,
vibrant Scher to that of the cool and direct gaze of her narrator.
Recalling how her mother became a voyeuristic presence, more sexualized and menacing rather than
protective or maternal, the tape Discipline Masters constituted a cathartic retelling of these childhood
and adolescent experiences, which were a subsequent source for Scher’s preoccupation with notions of
surveillance, a sexualized and controlling gaze. Less than a year later, the artist created her first pink guard
uniforms for the 1989 installation Security by Julia II at Artists Space, New York. Drawing on the juxtaposition
of the color’s playful and a uniform’s menacing connotations, Scher combined the analysis of control
mechanisms with feminist critique.
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