Swift's squandered meta outing

IT'S AN escalation in more ways than one.

Taylor Swift's much hissed about Reputation album dropped this month, faithful to the announcement on her Instagram account that has been surgically scrubbed of images of chirpy selfies and squad goals.

She had earlier promised revenge on the infamous Kanye-Kardashian-Swift spat that warranted a detailed timeline so spectators could pick apart the conflicts manufactured over a few years. Subtlety was never quite Swift's strong suit, and in the music video of Look What You Made Me Do that was dropped as a teaser, she turns against all personae she had put out in the past, dishing a generous dose of self-deprecation.

And if viewers did not cotton on to that the first time, the music video for Are You Ready will help by laying the symbolism on thick. The video features her as a cyborg, a la Ghost in the Shell, which is attempting to merge her various selves.

These are knowing nods to the criticism that she has chosen to be part of this narrative, a plotline that's generated hernet worth of about US$300 million.

The use of meta references rings similar to the technique deftly executed by the song goddess that is Beyonce in her titan 2016 album, Lemonade, the record that Adele was visibly ashamed to have beat for the Album of the Year Grammy.

It's a form of performance art for musicians, at a time when personalities have to clamour for even more attention by putting on a caricature that is under real-time surveillance.

But there is one stark difference that separates a pop princess from the Queen Bey.

Swift's attempt at performance art stars Swift as Narcissus, staring into the pond, only to see her reflected self staring back. The careful curation of her new personality - from her late-night rendezvous to her flippant self-loathing - exaggerates the fierce protection of herself.

By contrast, Beyonce shows her aching pain inflicted by the loudly whispered rumours of her husband's infidelity through a bracing stir of music that charts anger, sadness, reflection, redemption, and hope, turning a mirror back to the listeners, the audience, in a way that the best performance art should. Her music video for Sandcastles - a song with veiled references to infidelity - starred her suspected-to-be-cheating husband.With that amount of vulnerability on display, she's not villain or victim. She could be just one of us.

As an entertainer, Swift dons a new face for every new album. That invites cynics to take repeated swipes, but the rage against Swift's calculated commercialism is misplaced.

To begrudge Swift for turning herself into a product is naive. For perspective, a worthwhile question to ask is how Madonna would have survived her various re-inventions in these times.

Even amid critical acclaim for Beyonce's Lemonade album, the point must be made that turning family drama into a spliced form of entertainment that is then sold exclusively on the couple's music streaming service makes one wonder how much is fiction, how much is fact, and how much was repurposed for art for the Beyonce and Jay-Z empire.

It would be silly to expect full disclosure from performing artistes. What can be said is that where Swift attempts to use her life as a canvas, a blank space, the approach is lacking.

There is perhaps no coincidence that Jay-Z once collaborated on a performance artwork with the icon of the genre, Marina Abramovic.

And one way to think about how powerful performance art can be is to reference the iconic Rhythm 0 performance by the Yugoslavian artist, who has honed performance art to a masochistic hilt. In 1974, Abramovic put 72 items on a table in a gallery in Italy, and allowed museum-goers to use those items on her for six hours. Those items included roses with their stems on, honey, scissors, and a gun loaded with one bullet.

Left to its own device, humanity can misplace its moral compass. Museum-goers were gentle to start, but became increasingly aggressive, with some assaulting her sexually while she kept still. They cut her clothes, rendered her naked. Some pressed thorns into her skin, others cut her, and in a blood-chilling moment, one turned the gun towards the artist, and tried to have her finger pull the trigger on herself. That museum-goer had to be restrained by the rest.

After six hours, Abramovic took her first few steps after her self-imposed immobility, and people fled from her, terrified not of her but of themselves, because of her reduced state.

These are visceral extremities. But it also suggests that the best forms of performance art reflect for the audience some ugly truths to those who would watch, and ponder upon.

Swift's performance this time is of her staring right back at herself. She may have been worn down by the zeitgeist of her time, of crowdsourced validation. Perhaps today, she sees herself as her only friend and her biggest enemy. And if she had made that her message, she could have found new allies among most average listeners.

But that message may be the one she wants to protect this time, and not calculate to tell. What she would not say, may also just be the most honest thing.