Starting at the beginning: the revised, abbreviated, and fairly rough proposal which was accepted by my supervisory team in autumn 2021, and which frames all the work, research, thinking and tangents which follow.
Title: Towards an Ontology of Gendered Aesthetics: Surveying Topologies of Self and Other in Performance, Society and Media
Title: Towards an Ontology of Gendered Aesthetics: Surveying Topologies of Self and Other in Performance, Society and Media
Description: A
practice-led
exploration,
analysis
and
critique
of the
non-binary
body in
representation,
in
private
reality
and
being,
and
in
the
public
consciousness
Research Questions:
Why do some symbols persist universally in human collective consciousness (e.g. the hermaphrodite being, myths of gender-swapping beings/heroes, shamanistic bi-gendered ambiguity) and are yet ridiculed, challenged and suppressed in society and culture?
What constitutes an “acceptable” depiction of a non-standard body – is there such a thing? In what contexts?
Why can ‘niche’ areas like stage performance in an arts context and pornography seem less exclusionary of the Other in gender identity than the general public sphere?
Influenced by trans writer Juliet Jacques’ call for an écriture trans-féminine (after Cixous, see http://julietjacques.com), I hope to explore areas of experience and inner vs outer perception: for example in sexual contexts (e.g online interactions), and in general perceptions – a return to my ‘phiz/phys’ (physiognomy/physicality correspondence/duality) and how the Sartrian ‘look’ of the Other builds (or destroys) the inner sense of selfhood, creating a very real ‘hell’ that is ‘other people’ for those of non-cis gender. My own recent experience in online sex work (documented privately at some length last autumn) may shed some light on the darker (i.e., less illuminated, often ignored/stigmatised) side of non-cis/het being and lived experiences, responses, and interactions. This field of investigation helps to respond to 2 of my initial research questions:
1. What constitutes an “acceptable” depiction of a non-standard body – is there such a thing? In what contexts?
2. Why can ‘niche’ areas like stage performance in an arts context and pornography seem less exclusionary of the Other in gender identity than the general public sphere?
Trans discussions of sexual experiences may be accused of paraphiliac undertones (e.g. autogynephilia1, fetishized cross-dressing, auto-erotic narcissism) but this must not bar the genuine lived experiences of others from being regarded on the same level as cis/het or gay/lesbian expressions of queer sex, attraction, and problems (attitudes, prejudices) encountered therein. A key text here: Julia Serano, Whipping Girl.
As recent MFAAH work has covered much mythologically-inspired practice, I’ll use the myth/collective unconscious aspect as a starting point, through references to hermaphroditism/bisexuality (cf. Juliet Mitchell, Feminism & Psychoanaysis).
Reiterating the flattening of high/low socio-cultural dichotomies (cf. Takeshi Murakami’s ‘Superflat’ theory) and interrogating those same existing structures (cf. Foucault, Stallybrass & White writing after Bakhtin on the grotesque body and carnivalesque – also Linda Neade, The Female Nude) - exploring the rhizomatic forms of such structures and where these structures break down (or don’t), and where fetishized constructions and judgement values are applied in a specific non-cis context (whilst acknowledging limited work already exploring, for example, non-fetishized attraction in males to transwomen – see Evangelista, 2020). As I already have a documentary body of work from these experiences, I’ve (tentatively) begun a series of photographic pieces echoing both the artist-as-sculpture concepts of Bruce McLean (‘Nice Style’ pose band, ‘Pose Works for Plinth’) and the fetishistic sculptures of Allen Jones (‘Women as Furniture’) in which I respond directly to the gaze of viewers, conversations, demands and comments received during my 5 months of online wor in 20202. Hence, the performativity of trans selfhood and how performance constructs the self through the reactions gained from others in a certain symbiosis (expectation→ reaction → fulfilment). Another key text: Laura Mulvey, Visual & Other Pleasures.
Returning to the phiz/phys concept of perceived gender aesthetics, what constitutes gendered (usually arbitrary/essentialist) human features and body parts? Hence, drawings/renderings of ‘difficult’ (ambiguous) comic-book style portraits and subjects as a response to the 2018 Comicsgate debacle, and negativity directed against my own works in this field over the years: thus, a challenge to fixed positions of ‘gendered faces and bodies’, and exploration of the narrow field of cis/het male expectation with regard to the aesthetics of female characters and representation (as well as trans/NB characters3). This may then move into public anonymized surveying.
A starting point for possible research outcome: Penthesilea (film), Mulvey & Woollen, 1974.
1 Admittedly a controversial term, which warrants further analysis as my work hopes to cover not only the trans/NB person as perceived by the Other, but also how such persons perceive themselves, and behave/display themselves as a result of this inner perception (as well seeing Self as Other).
2 From an ethical and data collecting point of view, such statements and attitudes may have limited value – one issue raised against the Stanford ‘gay face’ study was that it utilised image data pulled from adult dating sites. The best use of these messages might be the informing of art practice rather than as ‘hard’ data or research, given the circumstances in which most of them were created – although they do present a spectrum of attitude and perception towards the author in a specific anonymised, social context, from a broad cross-section of male viewers – wherein, the intersection of race, nationality/culture, language, and even income became apparent.
3 Traditionally, female readers are far happier with androgynous figures than males – hence the great popularity of Japanese anime and manga among queer and female fans and creators.
