mumbling to myself aloud, in public. at times it is embarrassing, but it is as it is. I know you're expecting art!
It is here, but interwoven / embedded with cyber residue of life.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
in the space of absence (in process)
industrial foam found in broken bales off of commerce street. found useless tire tubes. each pod/womb piece is 8 to 9' in height and range from 8 to 18 inches in diameter
The detail superficially resembles a vagina dentata (vagina with teeth), which appears in a lot of native american myths and was popular among the surrealists. Even Picasso rendered a few. It was said to represent a male fear of castration and the threat of sex (enter engorged, withdraw diminished).
Your detail, however, has wires/bars that prevent or at least hamper entry. This open vagina with bars (vagina preventa) is very interesting in the context of your writings about openness and your struggle with remaining open. Symbolically it seems to say, "yes one must remain open to ideas and the world, but one must also protect oneself." Or is it altogether a tease? Something that could adequately fit in that openning could never get past the bars.
What's the difference between a slut and someone who's desparately unlucky in love? What's the difference between an explorer of pop culture and someone who's easily obsessed with the next new fad, trend, or gadget? Could one be one type and masquerade as another? Could one be one type and be mistaken for the other?
When did the female gaze begin to match that of the male? In the social space of work where everything says no to sex, women dress more sexually provocative than ever. Is it a tease? NO. YES. NO. YES. Look, want but no touching and certainly don’t say anything—ok well maybe yes. This has pervaded into every social setting I have encountered to date. Some times I just want to scream would you please quit showing me your boobies and the tattoos in your butt crack. PLEASE. With the loss of the sense of sexual power (that we claimed to never have but apparently did), I see my fellow woman becoming even more desperate in her mimicry of fertility and fleshiness. In seeking power, she has become overdependent on her flesh.
Then again, maybe it is simply my dilemma with my own sexual identity. Maybe it is related to none of these things.
Confusion is ongoing in the arena of what is public and what is private, what is self and what is other, and the ability to distinguish. Binary difference has been leveled. The importance of otherness has been flattened. The male and female gaze merge.
fleshy. sensual. perhaps the increase in the sensual (specifically I think of the pleasure of food and the pleasure of sex) is a response to the increasing loss of the physical in our everyday life--loss of physical exertion in work, loss of the intimate touch in nonsexual relationships. As we become spectators to life, our physical need for touch compells us and is acted out in the arena's of pleasure. maybe.
Some times I just want to scream would you please quit showing me your boobies and the tattoos in your butt crack. PLEASE. With the loss of the sense of sexual power...
I think that American pop-culture has stripped/sucked the sexual power out of the acts of bearing breasts and butt crack tattoos in a similar way that it has appropriated and dislocated aspects of other cultures such as tribal tattoos, henna, yoga, etc. It has adopted/been open to the superficial aspects/aesthetics and practices of other cultures but detached them from their original cultural, social, and religious significance. Pop-culture is open to the signifier, is all about the is signifier, but closed to that which is signified, especially if it results in a conflict betweem the supposed (often espoused but seldom in evidence) judeo-christian values/roots of American/Western pop-culture.
So as an artist who explores the culture perhaps the question is not binary "Am I open or closed to new experiences?" but rather one of degree "How open am I to an experience and how much time / energy / emotion am I willing to expend to research and explore a subject/an experience/a cultural phenomon, even a pop-culture one?"
I concur with the stripped bare and dislocated--devouring commodified code.
"How open am I to an experience and how much time / energy / emotion am I willing to expend to research and explore a subject/an experience/a cultural phenomon, even a pop-culture one?"
fleshy. sensual. perhaps the increase in the sensual (specifically I think of the pleasure of food and the pleasure of sex) is a response to the increasing loss of the physical in our everyday life
Your works are very sensual, very tactile. Can the viewer touch them? Your works also appear as though they require a fair amount of physical labor to create them. That's great for you the artist. You gain the benefit from the cathartic (on many different levels: physical, psychological, etc.) experience of physical work. The audience is left with the remnance.
Does the audience (is is your intention that the audience) experience that cathartic benefit vicariously? Perhaps like being a spectator at a sporting event? Is that enough?
The advent and popularity of the new WII video game that allows/requires the gamer to mimic certain movements in order to control its on screen doppleganger (avatar) would suggest that for some it isn't enough.
fleshy. sensual. perhaps the increase in the sensual (specifically I think of the pleasure of food and the pleasure of sex) is a response to the increasing loss of the physical in our everyday life
Your works are very sensual, very tactile. Can the viewer touch them? Your works also appear as though they require a fair amount of physical labor to create them. That's great for you the artist. You gain the benefit from the cathartic (on many different levels: physical, psychological, etc.) experience of physical work. The audience is left with the remnance.
Does the audience (is is your intention that the audience) experience that cathartic benefit vicariously? Perhaps like being a spectator at a sporting event? Is that enough?
The advent and popularity of the new WII video game that allows/requires the gamer to mimic certain movements in order to control its on screen doppleganger (avatar) would suggest that for some it isn't enough.
The spectacle of physicality. But I do have a surprise I am working on relative to this piece that will allow the viewer to interact with it (not work but possibly play and it doesn't involve touching just movement). I'ld tell you what I plan, but then I'ld have to kil....I mean it would spoil the surprise.
I'll let you know when I have it rigged up and you guys can come and test it.
8 comments:
The detail superficially resembles a vagina dentata (vagina with teeth), which appears in a lot of native american myths and was popular among the surrealists. Even Picasso rendered a few. It was said to represent a male fear of castration and the threat of sex (enter engorged, withdraw diminished).
Your detail, however, has wires/bars that prevent or at least hamper entry. This open vagina with bars (vagina preventa) is very interesting in the context of your writings about openness and your struggle with remaining open. Symbolically it seems to say, "yes one must remain open to ideas and the world, but one must also protect oneself." Or is it altogether a tease? Something that could adequately fit in that openning could never get past the bars.
What's the difference between a slut and someone who's desparately unlucky in love? What's the difference between an explorer of pop culture and someone who's easily obsessed with the next new fad, trend, or gadget? Could one be one type and masquerade as another? Could one be one type and be mistaken for the other?
When did the female gaze begin to match that of the male? In the social space of work where everything says no to sex, women dress more sexually provocative than ever. Is it a tease? NO. YES. NO. YES. Look, want but no touching and certainly don’t say anything—ok well maybe yes. This has pervaded into every social setting I have encountered to date. Some times I just want to scream would you please quit showing me your boobies and the tattoos in your butt crack. PLEASE. With the loss of the sense of sexual power (that we claimed to never have but apparently did), I see my fellow woman becoming even more desperate in her mimicry of fertility and fleshiness. In seeking power, she has become overdependent on her flesh.
Then again, maybe it is simply my dilemma with my own sexual identity. Maybe it is related to none of these things.
Confusion is ongoing in the arena of what is public and what is private, what is self and what is other, and the ability to distinguish. Binary difference has been leveled. The importance of otherness has been flattened. The male and female gaze merge.
fleshy. sensual. perhaps the increase in the sensual (specifically I think of the pleasure of food and the pleasure of sex) is a response to the increasing loss of the physical in our everyday life--loss of physical exertion in work, loss of the intimate touch in nonsexual relationships. As we become spectators to life, our physical need for touch compells us and is acted out in the arena's of pleasure. maybe.
Some times I just want to scream would you please quit showing me your boobies and the tattoos in your butt crack. PLEASE. With the loss of the sense of sexual power...
I think that American pop-culture has stripped/sucked the sexual power out of the acts of bearing breasts and butt crack tattoos in a similar way that it has appropriated and dislocated aspects of other cultures such as tribal tattoos, henna, yoga, etc. It has adopted/been open to the superficial aspects/aesthetics and practices of other cultures but detached them from their original cultural, social, and religious significance. Pop-culture is open to the signifier, is all about the is signifier, but closed to that which is signified, especially if it results in a conflict betweem the supposed (often espoused but seldom in evidence) judeo-christian values/roots of American/Western pop-culture.
So as an artist who explores the culture perhaps the question is not binary "Am I open or closed to new experiences?" but rather one of degree "How open am I to an experience and how much time / energy / emotion am I willing to expend to research and explore a subject/an experience/a cultural phenomon, even a pop-culture one?"
Perhaps not.
I concur with the stripped bare and dislocated--devouring commodified code.
"How open am I to an experience and how much time / energy / emotion am I willing to expend to research and explore a subject/an experience/a cultural phenomon, even a pop-culture one?"
hum. i shall have to contemplate.
aren't you suppose to be at work?
fleshy. sensual. perhaps the increase in the sensual (specifically I think of the pleasure of food and the pleasure of sex) is a response to the increasing loss of the physical in our everyday life
Your works are very sensual, very tactile. Can the viewer touch them? Your works also appear as though they require a fair amount of physical labor to create them. That's great for you the artist. You gain the benefit from the cathartic (on many different levels: physical, psychological, etc.) experience of physical work. The audience is left with the remnance.
Does the audience (is is your intention that the audience) experience that cathartic benefit vicariously? Perhaps like being a spectator at a sporting event? Is that enough?
The advent and popularity of the new WII video game that allows/requires the gamer to mimic certain movements in order to control its on screen doppleganger (avatar) would suggest that for some it isn't enough.
fleshy. sensual. perhaps the increase in the sensual (specifically I think of the pleasure of food and the pleasure of sex) is a response to the increasing loss of the physical in our everyday life
Your works are very sensual, very tactile. Can the viewer touch them? Your works also appear as though they require a fair amount of physical labor to create them. That's great for you the artist. You gain the benefit from the cathartic (on many different levels: physical, psychological, etc.) experience of physical work. The audience is left with the remnance.
Does the audience (is is your intention that the audience) experience that cathartic benefit vicariously? Perhaps like being a spectator at a sporting event? Is that enough?
The advent and popularity of the new WII video game that allows/requires the gamer to mimic certain movements in order to control its on screen doppleganger (avatar) would suggest that for some it isn't enough.
The spectacle of physicality. But I do have a surprise I am working on relative to this piece that will allow the viewer to interact with it (not work but possibly play and it doesn't involve touching just movement). I'ld tell you what I plan, but then I'ld have to kil....I mean it would spoil the surprise.
I'll let you know when I have it rigged up and you guys can come and test it.
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