Porno-graphing actions of the Blue Tape (original) (raw)
Related papers
Performativity on the Margin: Pornography: The Musical (2003)
Film Studies, 2018
Brian Hill's musical documentaries embody the essence of Judith Butler's notion of 'performativity' as the discourse used in identity formation. By asking his characters to sing their stories in addition to traditional interviews, Hill creates multiple screen identities, which elicits an embodied intimacy that is as much about freeing marginalised people to enact themselves in front of the camera as it is about revealing the director's own performance. This article uses a cognitive framework to explore how Hill's documentary, Pornography: The Musical (2003), leads the spectator to challenge existing social stereotypes of sex workers, as well as schematic ideas about traditional documentary form and function.
Bob Fosse's 'Sweet Charity' (1969), 'Cabaret' (1972), and 'All That Jazz' (1979), 2023
The musical films of Bob Fosse, 'Sweet Charity' (1969), 'Cabaret' (1972), and 'All That Jazz' (1979) offer a radical alternative to the ‘arcadian’ musical format with edgier and darker themes as a response to the rapidly developing socio-politico climate and the sexual revolution. However, although 'Cabaret' remains well documented, his other musical films 'Sweet Charity' and 'All That Jazz', remain primarily neglected in academia, which I will rectify. Moreover, while many prolific writers and scholars, including Laura Mulvey and Rick Altman, have previously analysed the movie and film musical from a heteronormative male gaze perspective, this is at odds with Fosse’s approach to filmmaking, which often subverts such a hypothesis. My line of enquiry consequently developed to explore the link between filming styles and representations of gender and sexuality in Fosse’s films over a ten-year period and observe the various shifts in register. This approach eschews the more bibliographical texts, monographs, and documentaries about Fosse, allowing me to study his films critically from a unique perspective. Using a variety of methodologies and theories, including the social history of art, semiotics, feminism, formalism, and film studies, I will analyse selected case studies where the intersection between filming styles and representations of sexuality are most pertinent/interesting to my central argument. In the process, I often refer to the terminologies ‘visual reflexivity’ and ‘theatrical reflexivity’ to explore this phenomenon and examine how they interact with gender in 'Sweet Charity', 'Cabaret', and 'All That Jazz' through techniques such as film editing and camera angles, as well as performative arts. Furthermore, Fosse’s radical use of cinematic space, including altered states of consciousness, is also explored coinciding with the backstage musicals’ shift from the ‘book musical’ to ‘concept musical’, in line with modern audiences’ expectations and avant-garde approaches to the genre.
Porno-graphing:‘dirty’ subjectivities & self-objectification in contemporary lens-based art
2017
Through my PhD thesis, 'Porno-graphing: 'dirty' subjectivities & self-objectification in contemporary lens-based art', I use the term 'porno-graphing' to group together and examine lens-based artworks where artists use as art-material sexual situations or sets of sexual dynamics present in their life independently of their art practice. I consider how artists act upon these sexual situations in order to make art out of them, the art-results they produce and their means of sharing them with audiences. I argue that the artists whose work I examine, use sexual situations that can potentially be perceived as 'taboo'; for example Leigh Ledare involves incest-related dynamics in Pretend You Are Actually Alive and Kathy Acker with Alan Sondheim implicate child-sexual subjectivities in the Blue Tape. I argue that they choose and use these situations to self-submit into the 'dirtiness' of their sexual and artistic subjectivities and in doing so to negotiate how subjectivity is produced. To do so, they use visual vocabularies of autobiography to self-objectify into roles as both artists, e.g. assuming positions such as the white male pornographer-exploiter (the work of Ledare) and as sexual subjects, e.g. 'perverted' or hyper-sexual objects of desire (the work of Lo Liddell). In embracing these roles they create 'intensified encounters' (Edelman & Berlant, 2014) between the artist, the art-object and the viewer, to interrogate 'normative' and 'antinormative' patterns of meaning-making and value-attribution regarding subjectivity and art.
Critical closeness, intimate distance: encounters in theLove Art Laboratory
Journal of Visual Art Practice
The slippery tingle of your lips Audiences were continually invited to get up 'close and personal' with Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens over the course of their seven-year Love Art Laboratory project (2005-11). Staging their intimate coupledom as public spectacle was the starting point for Sprinkle and Stephens and this autobiographical motif has endured as they have continued to promote their 'ecosexual' brand of environmental politics, within and beyond the confines of the initial project. Extreme Kiss (fig.1) was an early performance in the project featuring marathon kissing sessions in various locations. Their attentive loving focus on each other certainly offers a close look at the intimate admixture of Annie and Beth's salivary juices, permitting me, as I watch the ten minute video excerpt at their online depository, loveartlab, to imagine the feel and taste of those distended tongues and masticating lips. 1 The live versions went on for far longer: the pair sustained 3 to 4 hours non-stop in May 2005 at the opening of Private vs Public in San Francisco, for example. 2 The video allows me to focus on the cycles of tonguing, pecking, licking, nibbling that the two unstintingly performed. They alternate between lingering passages of mouths wide open, and lips tightly pursed like punctuation points, both utterly concentrated on each other, yet playing to the gallery too. They surely knew that the affects circulating my witness-any witness-to such a scene were neither certain nor guaranteed. I'm aware that a viewer is as likely to be switched off as turned on by such an invitation to gawp at these two making out, perhaps seeing the performance as a kind of confrontation or challenge. In the context of Sprinkle's breast cancer diagnosis and treatment early on in the project, the couple's bald heads become an obvious signifier, and the work can be seen as a challenge, or riposte to the forces that were conspiring to keep them apart, whether pathological or political. The performance, in its live and recorded iterations was not only a defiant response to the disease that threatened Sprinkle's life, and their life together, but also a statement of the resilience of queer love, at that time denied
Sound Kinks: Sadomasochistic Erotica in Audiovisual Music Performances
2016
In this dissertation I study musical, sonic and multimodal representations of sadomasochistic erotica in films, music videos, stage performances, and popular music. The study consists of an introductory chapter (1), a theoretical chapter on sadomasochism (2), three chapters discussing six case studies (3–5), as well as discussion and conclusion chapters (6 and 7). The examples investigated are the films Secretary (2003) and Duke of Burgundy (2014), Leonard Cohen’s song ‘I’m Your Man’ (1988), Elvis Costello’s song ‘When I Was Cruel No. 2’ (2002), Rihanna’s song and music video S&M (2011), and a filmed operatic production of W. A. Mozart’s Don Giovanni focusing on the character Zerlina (1787; dir. Claus Guth, 2008). In the conclusion, I briefly discuss the film Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) as an example of post-feminist, neoliberal sadomasochism occurring at the time of writing. This study introduces a new conceptual tool for interpreting music with specific regard to eroticism: kink reading, or kink listening. My research is informed by three main areas of inquiry and methodologies: cultural musicology, queer musicology, and close reading. I theorise sadomasochism in a resolutely multifaceted and critical way using theory on performative materialism, which emphasizes both the lived experience of sadomasochism and the social power structures informing practices. My findings indicate that there are certain strategies through which SM erotica has been depicted in music, which often include a mixture of humorous musical language and semiotic signifiers of the Uncanny, or the unsettling. This combination is distinctive of depictions of SM sex scenes. The music is often encoded as multisensory, and transforms perceptions of time and place. While sadomasochist representations can reflect cultural imbalances, SM can also be utilized as a queer, critical tool for empowering non-normative bodies, genders, and sexualities by making practitioners sexual agents rather than victims. SM can also broaden the concept of sex from a genital-oriented, procreation-directed activity to a state of mind combining suspended time and space and a mixture of sexual pleasure and sexualised pain.
The concept of the homosexual male gaze could arguably be attributed to three filmmakers of the post-modern underground film apparatus, in particular Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and Jack Smith. Each through his own particular gaze was able to create a sub-genre of film content, which included either pornographic content or the implication of a sexual act, as well as a general eroticization of the male form. It is interesting to consider the dichotomous purpose of female nudity to male nudity, particularly through the homosexual male gaze of the Avant-Garde. Usually, in narrative film the former is meant to arouse, the latter is meant to provoke. This brings us to the difference between feature film and pornography. Though full frontal of either gender could be attributable to pornographic content, the thin line between them lies within the exposure of male nudity particularly concerning the penis status. If the penis is phallic, it is acceptable under MPAA restriction to be admissible into the content of a film, while an erect penis immediately suggests pornographic content, and is still prohibited in the mainstream narrative. Thereby, this particular sub-genre within the Avant-Garde movement of American filmmakers can be considered an early precursor to the New Queer Cinema movement in its ability to toy with the functions of sexual images within their mise-en-scene and providing the viewer with not only a voyeuristic pleasure as Mulvey would describe it, but a disconnect with filmic sexual status quo. I believe an interesting way to approach this dichotomy, and the very nature of this sexual contrast is to analyze the trajectory of the admission of nudity and sexual suggestion into films. In my opinion, the era of post-modern Avant-Garde is an interesting starting off point as it illustrates the bridging of the gaps between the artistic and the pornographic, as well as transgressing what is taboo to what is experimental. The most obvious and perhaps first example of this is Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963), which graphically examined and subsequently deconstructed sexuality in all of its forms. The film permeates with gratuitous nudity, both male and female. The strange thing seems to be that though the subjects of the film find themselves proprietors of a vast orgy, there is never a point in which any of them engage in any sexual acts. They lie amidst the mise-en-scene, fondling each other and becoming seemingly aroused. It is the implementation of nudity rather than the act of sex itself for arousal. The way in which the characters use each other’s genitals suggest a childlike curiosity with the human form as an infant approaches the presence of his mother’s breast, or a child begins to discover his own genitalia. It is completely de-sexualizing to where their acts are more comic than sensual. In this we see, that genitalia, particularly male genitalia has a use in film different from any form of sexual suggestion. It is an apparatus of play and curiosity rather than the act of sex, which is how it is usually perceived. Conversely, there is the work of Kenneth Anger, who’s Scorpio Rising (1964) was released only a year after Flaming Creatures. At no point in the film, is there any male nudity, though the film’s focus is a hyper-eroticism of the male form. There are various scenes of young men, dressing themselves, working out, and being generally macho. Every shot has a profound element of sensuality, and yet avoids any blatant depiction of genitalia. Thus, it can be deduced that while the male form can be eroticized by showing it artistically and with a kind of filmic finesse that eroticizes certain parts like arms, legs, and chests, the presence of male genitalia would immediately de-sexualize this mise-en-scene and devoid the subject of desirability. And though both of these filmmakers can be classified strictly into the same categoruy regarding Avant-Garde film of a certain movement, with the addition of Andy Warhol, we can begin to see the birth of what would eventually become New Queer Cinema. I am of the opinion that it is particularly their utilization of the male form and disregard for narrative filmic ideology that challenged the notion of “proper” and “improper” content by making the gratuitous symbolic, and the innuendo sexual. In regards to Warhol, he was able to bring humor to the whole question of showing or not showing. The perfect illustration of this is the content of the film Blow Job (1964). The title of the film suggests the presence of a sexual act, but the audience is robbed, as the entirety of the film is a close up of a man’s face in mid-act. We see his face contort and exude internal pleasure, but there is always the question if he is actually being fellated, or if we as the audience are in on a continuous joke as he could be simply acting. Warhol never lets his audience find out. But the suggestion of the act through the title is enough for the audience to put their trust in the questionable integrity of the film. He is able label his film blatantly enough so that it suggests outright pornographic content, and subsequently denies the film the very same content that would make it so. The film Blow Job thus becomes its own contradiction, it is eroticizing an act which is not present in the mise-en-scene; eroticization without sexuality. Considering this group of filmmakers and their implementation of sexual philosophy into a visual apparatus, we can begin to see a theoretical trend regarding the use of nudity, in particular the male genitalia as statements in themselves, considering their purpose within the content of the films.
2021
Focusing on Cait McKinney and Hazel Meyer's site-specific exhibition Tape Condition: degraded (2016) at The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ+ Archives, this paper explores reparative and desiredriven approaches for working with partial and missing histories within archives. Focusing specifically on artists working as archivists, I consider how the limitations of evidence-based histories can be addressed through creative practice. The essay unfolds in two parts. The first examines a selection of objects from the exhibition to draw out the historical context of The ArQuives, grounding my analysis of the conditions that have created and perpetuated specific archival gaps; in this case, pornography made by or featuring lesbian and trans people. I consider how the animation of specific historical narratives anchors the exhibition as an archival intervention that positioned The ArQuives broadly as a site of community, conflict, censorship, and activism in the past and the present. The second part of the paper examines key elements of the exhibition that exemplify McKinney and Meyer's reparative approach to archival practice. Drawing on Eve Sedgwick's (2003) theorization of reparative reading practices as a strategy of creative resistance and resilience in queer life and Eve Tuck's (2009) definition of desire-based community research, I argue that McKinney and Meyer practiced a creative methodology that supplants the paranoid position of archive fever (Derrida 1996) with an erotic reparative impulse, or erotic fever.
The Problematics of the Erotic: Intimacy and Exposure in Artistic Performance
In this paper I will discuss some concerns that the creative team of Umbilical , a collaborative multimedia arts project of which I am conceptual director, faced regarding the portrayal of female sexual identity through the embodied and representational media of dance and digital image. Representing the erotic raises creative challenges for any artist. Representing the female erotic raises particular conceptual and aesthetic challenges, provoking concerns regarding the ubiquitous, yet often apocryphal and arbitrary, nature of cultural and social signifiers inscribed upon female sexual identity. Visual and embodied media which are marked by such cultural signifiers inscribed upon female sexual identity often belie or fail to do justice to the immanent and intimate nature of individual female sexual and erotic experience. As representational, embodied and performative media, dance and digital image risk an over exposition of the intimacy of sexual experience: the intrinsic is made extrinsic. In this paper I will address some of the most challenging conceptual and aesthetic concerns that the creative team have attempted to address in Umbilical such as how to negotiate with such manufactured signifiers for the sexual/sexualised, erotic/eroticised female viewed body.
Dance Chronicle, 2020
This article situates choreography within topical debates on post-privacy, critically interrogating a trend toward the exposure of intimate life and sexuality in performance. A scene from Pina Bausch's Window Washer (1997), shedding light on domestic violence and the sexualized female body, is related to the feminist assertion that "the personal is political." Michael Parmenter's A Long Undressing (1995), a piece about the artist's identity as a gay man, catalyzes discussions of the closet, individual authenticity, and queer identity politics. I assess the two works' contributions to discourses on the private-public distinction, drawing on a range of contrasting perspectives from philosophical, sociological, and political fields.
A critical approach to intimacy in art
Masters Thesis, University of Auckland, Department of Art History, 2017
This thesis examines intimacy in art, historically and in today’s networked world. It looks at the personal and revealing nature of intimacy, using psychological theory to support the thesis’ contention. This is that the internet has both changed and extended the phenomenon of intimacy in art, transforming both images and artworks. Historically, the female body, especially the nude, was used as both a means and an end to create a feeling of intimacy. The contemporary artworks examined both reveal and disrupt these historical gendered connotations of intimacy in art. Two key works analysed, Amalia Ulman’s The Annals of Private History (2015) and Frances Stark’s My Best Thing (2011), are particularly revealing in this respect. Intimacy and what it means is explored using the psychodynamic theory of Gerald Cupchik and his staircase arrangement of emotions (2016). This theory shows how intimacy can manifest implicitly as an affect, as well as explicitly at the emotional- cognitive level. These explorations are supported by an analysis of several works by relevant artists, including Tracey Emin, Kate Newby and Amalia Ulman. The various ways intimacy has been depicted and evoked throughout art history, including the significance of domestic scenes and the issue of voyeurism, is also examined. Comparisons are made of the ‘intimist’ paintings of Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt. Photography is then examined as a turning point in the evolution of intimacy: it made voyeurism and exhibitionism easy, and intimate images infinitely more reproducible. This development is exemplified in the works of Nan Goldin, which are reviewed. Adrian Piper and Cindy Sherman, whose works are then examined, went one step further, critically addressing the phenomenon of intimacy by turning the camera on themselves, so disrupting the ease with which intimate images, particularly those of the female body, are often consumed.