Structuralist and post-structuralist linguistic theory has it that the relationship between the name (signifier) of a thing and its essence or identity (signified) is an essentially arbitrary one – there’s no reason why a thing should be called by one name and not another, save for habit or convention. In his performance Deed Poll, Martin John Callanan shows in an imaginative and quietly witty way how things aren’t necessarily so straightforward. By changing his name from Martin John Callanan to Martin John Callanan using the eponymous legal procedure, the artist demonstrated to a live audience at London’s Whitechapel Gallery the vectors of legal, political and religious power that underpin the day-to-day performative use of names in Western societies. The various hoops to be jumped through in order to satisfy banks and government bodies, including swearing on the Bible, spoken declarations, testimony from a responsible third party, signatures from witnesses, and the stamp and signature of an official registrar, are a far cry from the free movement of signifiers imagined by the post-structuralists.
Callanan’s performance accompanied the presentation of two of his works, International Directory of Fictitious Telephone Numbers and Letters 2004-2006, in The Whitechapel’s summer exhibition, The London Open. The gallery’s stated intent was “to showcase the most dynamic work being made in London in 2012â€, with works being selected through an open submission process. The result is a mix of the poetic, the intelligent, and the tedious. Besides Callanan’s contributions, the intersections of power and language were also explored by Sol Archer, whose video work Palace in the Left spun a dazzling web of references encompassing hummingbirds, particle physics, Mayan rituals, neurobiology, and more. Just at the point when you are ready to believe in the interconnectedness of everything, however, the video concludes with the promise that all this is “coming soon to your future homeâ€: networks of meanings made possible by their subsumption under the category of consumer product.