Of Ducks and Differences: Ambiguity and Resemblance

 Ambiguity has been a recurring keyword for me throughout this research so far, and when viewed in practical terms - how far can we go before it is assumed a truth of either x or not x in a form or persona? Before a form stops being ambiguous and can be accepted for what it purports to be, at least on the surface?

For the sake of neutrality and to avoid getting mired in gender identity matters, I'll frame this discussion in terms of the old saying regarding that which looks like, and walks like, a duck. The duck metaphor or stand-in reduces things to a less ambiguous level and helps us to see at which level taxonomies and definitions apply, or cease to apply, and why this may be.

Logically, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks, why should we not allow it to be described as a duck? Must we insist upon analyzing it inside-out with regard to its 'apparent' versus its 'actual'/underlying duckness (or lack thereof - usually defined in taxonomical terms of reduction, or its consistent similarity to other entities which have all been previously rubber-stamped with a 'genuine duck' seal of approval, by the hand of someone who is not a duck themselves, but who defines for others whether or not they may be allowed to be perceived as ducks - as opposed to swans, emus, or archaeopteryxes?).

In reality, we accept the following image as being splendidly representative of duckhood:

We also, from a very young age (that is, pre-adult judgement) have no problem whatsoever with identifying the following as a duck, either:

Or even the following - a thing made by hand, with only superficial resemblances to duckhood (can't walk or fly, lay eggs, quack, etc.), yet which is convincing enough to attract real members of that same species:

To then waddle on from the duck metaphor, why can we universally assume that the following image represents an entity we unthinkingly define as "she":

and, paradoxically, also this:

yet are unwilling or unable to do so with regard to this:

It follows, therefore, that a few hundred thousand tonnes of metal or wood is perceived by many as more inherently female than a living, breathing person (who may or may not have the exact same outward biology as an assigned-at-birth female). The connection (or disconnection) is, I perceive, more than semantic or visual - it operates on a gut, instinctive, and emotional level, wherein emotional attachment is more easily transferred to an object/piece of machinery under one's control than a human being capable of the same emotional responses and sensations as the one who does the naming. Perhaps that is the keyword in all this: control, and the implied power/jurisdiction which is invested in the (usually male) owner or commander of a vessel over that technological/mechanical interface, but which is denied in the case of an actual person which is too *similar* to the protagonist, too much like himself, too incapable of yielding to commands on account of shared biology (in the sense, of course, that what is popularly described as "feminine" tends to be identified also, variously, as "soft", "yielding", "submissive", etc. - as witness the recurring tropes of hyper-femininity inherent in the "forced feminization/sissy" area of pornography and role-playing - something for which I have no stomach, and am aware of only for its intersection with the trans* spectrum on the level of cross-dressing and female embodiment fantasy theory. (NB: Despite its appearances, I view this more as a subset of extreme masochism rather than any clear or defined actual gender identification, as it is predicated on the idea of "feminization" representing submission, passivity, and at the extreme end, sexual and other forms of abuse. Thus the debates of how far down the spectrum we may go before we start accommodating fetishism as a form of gender diversity at such public events as Manchester Sparkle - which is a discussion for another post perhaps, but one I have seen argued repeatedly in the past.)

What I'm evidently pushing towards with all of this (but still circumnavigating somewhat) is a code of semiotics and signifiers: whether of the "C'est ne pas un pipe" art-historical variety, or the visualization of Sign-Signifier-Signified - something along these lines, as I see it:

The argument is far more complex than simply that of a person exhibiting the outward signs (costume, behaviours, overall appearance) of an other, but in how far - intrinsically - that exhibition can be said to make them analogous, or identical, to that other - a situation dependent upon not just the quality of the performance, but also how well that performance constructs the essence of of the other in the minds of observers. Putting on a police officer's uniform doesn't make anybody a police officer, even if they have knowledge of laws and have sworn (personally) to uphold them, and spend their time going around protecting the innocent. What constitutes a genuine police officer in a society is a far more complex set of relationships, histories, connections and requirements, of course. But in the minds of many citizens, the would-be officer could be just as much - if not more so - a police officer as the 'real thing', especially if they had only positive, personal experiences from an encounter with such a person, who could even come across as friendlier, more approachable and more helpful than some genuine representatives of law enforcement. In such a case, the impersonator may be said to be modelling the 'ideal' of a police officer, presenting the positive side and downplaying the negative associations which have become increasingly public in recent years - in which case, and if everybody involved benefits from the encounter or the experience, where's the harm? (Leaving aside, of course, the realities of accountability, legal obligations, public trust, etc.). 

Let's leave the ducks in the pond and cut to the gender case now.

“Men, contrary to the fantasy of the transsexual, can never, even with surgical intervention, feel or experience what it is like to be, to live, as women. At best the transsexual can live out his fantasy of femininity—a fantasy that in itself is usually disappointed with the rather crude transformations effected by surgical and chemical intervention. The transsexual may look like a woman but can never feel like or be a woman. The one sex, whether male or female or some other term, can only experience, live, according to (and hopefully in excess of) the cultural significations of the sexually specific body… This gulf, this irremediable distance, is what remains intolerable to masculinist regimes bent on the disavowal of difference."

    (Elizabeth Grosz, 'Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. (1994). p207-208, quoted in Cix Shrimpton, 'The pornographic ontology of the shemale: Transwoman as radical feminism’s metaphysical victim'. )

Herein we hit the dilemma that may be the crux of all this research: how much of identity - and gender - is merely appearance, whether biological (natural or otherwise), facial, sartorial, etc.? I appreciate completely the often-used argument against the transwoman-as-woman, that one who has not been born a woman, experienced the growing up stages of puberty, menstruation, social and cultural and conditioning etc. throughout their entire life on a daily basis that define one's place as a woman in the world, cannot be said to be truly - in any rounded, socio-cultural way - a woman as one who has (and one of the reasons why I spend most of my time discussing in-betweenness, non-binary being, and third-gender, rather than pushing the transwoman-as-woman line which, to me, can have potential problems with relation to furthering the strict gender binary, and allowing the continued encoding of persons as either/or). That does not mean such a person has no claim to womanhood whatsoever, for upon gender reassignment, it is expected that they will then experience the responses and interactions common to one of that gender and in that position, with all the positive (and negative) attributes that such status brings.

A lot of this seems to echo Jean-Paul Sartre's ideas of essence, true nature (and its construction in the minds of others), and the very famous example of the waiter who, in trying too hard to project publicly his waiterly credentials, is seen to be merely 'playing' at being a waiter, rather than working hard on the true fundamentals of waiting on tables. Yet can we say that Sartre's waiter is less of a waiter, than Daffy is a duck? After all, the waiter is employed in that role, receives a wage suitable to that position, and will be referred to as a waiter by his employer, colleagues and the public. Daffy is not an egg-laying creation of nature, but a series of squiggles and dots on acetate sheets drawn by talented cartoonists. And while he may talk like a duck, he doesn't really walk like one - his legs aren't short enough.

That's all for now, as I think I need to push my nose back into semiotic theory again and figure out where I take it from here. The question there, however, remains: Structuralist, or Post-Structuralist? I've spent time in both camps in the past, but now it might be time to choose a side.

Thoughts and References on Three Recent Works

Note: Having resisted (upon supervisor request) the usual impulse to write at length about recent artworks created for this project, what follows is simply a personal aide-memoire to where my thinking was at the time of making, should any future need arise to explain them.

Lateralus

The specific spelling and purpose of this piece is best described in the words of others: the alternative metal band Tool and the song and album of that name, described in detail here, from which a few relevant quotes may suffice:

"The album title is something of a dual reference, nodding to both the thigh muscle vastus lateralis and the concept of "lateral thinking..." [...]

"[Lateralis] itself is actually a muscle, and although the title does have something to do with the muscle, it's more about lateral thinking and how the only way to really evolve as an artist — or as a human, I think — is to start trying to think outside of the lines and push your boundaries," Keenan told Aggro Active in May 2001. "Kind of take yourself where you haven't been and put yourself in different shoes; all of those clichés..."

The concept grew out of the sideways photographic shot, reflecting the idea of erotic charge inherent in the area of waist -> thigh which holds the most erogenous interest, by defining defining ambiguity (by not explicitly revealing the genitalia, but denoting - in outline - the curve of the backside and thigh), and also literally displaying the 'lateralis' muscle, part of the quadriceps group. The eroticism of ambiguity and hiddenness was therefore the point of exploration here (as echoed in the frisson of the old trope of certain men being more interested in a woman whose dress being blown around on a windy day than in a fully-exposed 'page 3' model) - whilst leaving the genital area as a question mark. This questioning/ambiguous zone is itself left in a space of ambiguity, being both present in the actual scene, but not visible in the resulting recording, due to the nature of the angle, the pose, and the direction of the camera. The 'tease' is therefore on the part of the camera as much as the performer/model, as a rotation of ninety degrees of either would reveal the 'hiddenness' to the viewer. This idea of having more information present than is chosen to be shown has begun to feed into sketchy plans for a possible live work - exploring, for example, the concept of a recorded performance interacting with a live, physical one, in which a 'full exposure' may be made on the recording, but which is covered up (censored) by the hand, say, of the performer interacting with that recording - in which precise temporal and spatial placement of the live performer combine to obscure what would otherwise be a more explicit 'revelation' to the audience. In a case such as this, synchronization and choreography would be required to 'keep them guessing'. No doubt there are theories of spatial/temporal placement in performance which can articulate this better, but at this stage it as much a case of 'putting out feelers' as much as anything. 

In terms of feminine eroticism, this idea was given to me in a conversation with a trans friend some years ago, where she described the waist->thigh section of the body as capable of displaying the most charged imagery, with its attendant accessories of suspender/garter straps, stocking tops, G-string, etc.

Hardwired

The short film 'Hardwired' is already video-documented online with regards to the 30 years of my ongoing interest in Cyberpunk and sci-fi, and the movie itself features its own art-history narrative and explanation in the dialogue. What remains to be added here, then, is really the deeper notions of integration/disintegration, expressed through the figures of the twins who are similar in so many ways, yet so apart in others: both in terms of personality, outlook, career, and location. Despite this they remain joined via the 'fragments of each other', whether physical - like Em's Godzilla postcard and Motorhead LP, which reflect Jay's interest in these pop-culture things - their DNA - and their shared memories (Jay digging up 'Grandpa's onion patch' in an early disclosure of his long-term archaeological interests). The concepts of duality and integration, again with reference to ancient philosophical and mystical systems (yin/yang, Gnostic and alchemical works), are themes I've developed over nearly 20 years of writing narrative fiction and creating artworks in various forms. Can true unity ever be reached, or is it an eternally untouchable ideal? Jay's line that "we were the same person, once..." hints at the idea of 'splitting off' that which can never again be re-integrated physically - as the twins have grown up to become two separate entities, and perhaps the only way to rediscover what was lost is through the psychological, subconscious realm, in Jungian terms, or via Joseph Campbell's 'hero journey'.

Throw in a third, ambiguous spectator in the form of the Medusa sculpture herself - one who passively watches, records, surveys - in tune with current (and futuristic) surveillance culture - and we have a distinct loop of gazes which Em describes to Jay in their last communication, and which ultimately is shared between artist and creation in the final sequence, wherein one is literally looking through the eye/s of the other and the surveyor becomes the surveyed and vice versa, with the artist becoming an extension of the artwork. This idea probably has its origins in my studies of performance artist Stelarc and his use of cyborg and technology/human interfaces, and can be inferred as the Medusa sculpture appropriating the human form for its own ends - functioning limbs and organs which have now extended beyond the limitations of the static, constructed figure, being a complete reverse of Stelarc or Haraway's cyborg embodiments - the 'meat' becoming secondary to, and controlled by, the 'machine', whereby Medusa's gaze is extended beyond the limit of what she was originally equipped with (or at least as far as the 'hardwired' cable can run).

Endura

The title firstly refers to the concept of endurance - both on the part of the performer (a 15-minute, non-stop improvisational dance/striptease work*) and on the part of the viewer (how long they choose to engage with the work). The work is a rough concept for what may, in some form, end up as a public performance further down the line, perhaps with reference to the interactive recorded/live acts sketched above for 'Lateralus'. The title derives from the form of ritualistic purification practiced by the medieval Cathar sect, often used to precede death (though often misconstrued as a 'hunger strike' or suicide ritual).

The enactment of ritual, and accompanying ecstatic forms, are augmented by the looped Sufi 'trance' music, with an occasional abandonment suggestive of the Maenads and ancient ritual frenzy. This ritualistic element is repeated in one of my reference points, Roland Barthes' 1960s essay on striptease.

The underlying theme is again one of ambiguity: How far can the pretence of a NB person 'masquerading' as femme be taken, without actual revelation? If I was a cisgender female, the final reveal would be complete - but as I'm biologically not, it isn't - but only if the viewer reads me as a male-bodied performer, hence the ambiguity (or lack thereof) is as much a construct in the mind of the viewer, as it is a deliberate and knowing ploy on my part.

*The concept of a one-take, non-stop 'endurance-based' and improvised performance, was first explored in my MFAAH work of a year ago, the 'Medusa Chronicles'.

Evolving Gendered Selfhood and Current Art Practice

 Sometimes, simply reading an essay or text can provoke an entire essay of thoughts and observations in response - and during the weekend's Storm Malik power outage, I had little else to do but read (and keep warm). A detailed browsing of Julie Serano's critique of Blanchard's 'autogynephilia' theory opened my eyes (Autogynephilia: A scientific review, feminist analysis, and alternative ‘embodiment fantasies’ model, The Sociological Review Monographs: 2020, Vol. 68(4) 763–778, DOI: 10.1177/0038026120934690).

I had occasionally pondered myself as being something of an apostate for not necessarily denying that theory, as I have known various people who say they have it, or have had it, and I certainly felt I had something very like it through the earlier stages of my own history (most strongly when I still felt very 'part-time', and the whole thing felt like a fun escape into another body, another world - a kind of embodied virtual reality experience). However, as Serano points out, cisgender women have recently been reported to see themselves in the same manner as described by the original Blanchard research - which focuses only on the paraphilic nature of transwomen's attraction to themselves (without considering that other genders also exhibit such behaviours - or why). Serano's alternative model of 'FEF' (female embodiment fantasy) holds more water in the light of other genders' views of themselves - and just over a year go, my attention was drawn by a close friend to this public story:

KOURTNEY KARDASHIAN SHARES ARTICLE ABOUT BEING AUTOSEXUAL ON POOSH LIFESTYLE WEBSITE

and a short quote which suddenly made a lot of personal sense:

"27 Dec 2020 ... “It could mean dancing in the mirror in a cute outfit. If feeling sexy independent of someone else has ever turned you on, that's autosexuality..."

Another term to add to my vocabulary, and one which managed to tick another box for me - specifically my deep interest in erotic performance (doing, as much as viewing). On a further note, the first rock artist I ever 'got into' was Iggy Pop, c. 1986, and the second was Queen, maybe 6 months later - both featuring performers who exhibited ambiguous behaviours on stage, and as it turned out, both who were not unaccustomed to stripping off clothes in front of their audiences either (Fred Mercury invariably going topless through the course of a show, Iggy notoriously going full-frontal). I would argue that these performance traits in those I grew up admiring can be classed on some level as autosexual, and are performed with or without any audience expectation or approval - the performer simply does their thing, saying "here I am, this is me" - an attitude I embodied myself during the webcam porn work of 2020, and which was almost always backed with suitable music, as well - Iggy & the Stooges' 'Search & Destroy' and 'Raw Power' being special favourites.

'Selfie after Iggy c. 1986', 2020

My own earlier experiences of this kind of behaviour was always complex, because until the personal revelations of the past few years I always viewed myself (internally, and visually) in very strict binary terms: 'him', or 'her'. I knew I wasn't trans because I had no interest in transitioning, yet I had known that from an early age I had always been able to view myself (at least in socially-constructed terms) as 'Otherly',  a point Serano addresses in some detail when remarking upon the generational difference in manifestations of what is classed as 'cross-dressing': 

"In the 30-plus years since Blanchard conducted his original research, there have been massive shifts in transgender awareness, visibility, legal recognition and access to healthcare and resources. Today, ‘late-onset’ trans women are not necessarily forced into a crossdresser stage, as they can readily access information about transgender lives via the Internet or trans peers. Instead of engaging in secretive crossdressing and fantasy, many of these individuals come out as nonbinary, genderfluid, trans dykes, or queer women, and they often begin presenting femininely and/or socially transitioning as teenagers or young adults. And this lack of a secretive ‘crossdresser stage’ largely explains why these younger trans women experience far fewer FEFs than their counterparts from previous generations (Nuttbrock et al., 2011a, 2011b)."  (Serano, p. 773)

Whilst I often write and speak out against the inherent dangers of 'putting people into boxes' via invented taxonomies, the recent cultural expansion of LGBTQIA+ selfhoods finally helped me make sense of myself, and allowed me to see myself comfortably as 'in between' the gender poles, predominately in a physical, biological manner (also influenced by Ian Hacking's notion of "making up people" - not in the sense of jumping on a trendy buzzword bandwagon to associate oneself with a newly-identified and publicized 'disorder', 'condition' or state of being, but rather in the freedom and understanding engendered by such, providing new ways of understanding people that was not possible before). The currency of terms like 'genderfluid' and 'nonbinary' allowed me to embrace and rationalize all the various aspects of myself, revelations which I spent several years exploring in artworks through my DJCAD art school career from 2017 onwards. My early attempts at 'pinup' or glamour self portraiture from the early 2000s always obscured the genitalia, as I saw this as being contrary to my expression of femaleness at that time. The effect of this was to render any full-frontal imagery as something of a lie - an exposure which doesn't expose, and which I'm now re-exploring in work for this very course, playing specifically with the ambiguity of what is hidden and inviting the viewer to fill in the gaps in their own mind. 

Typical 'arty' self-portrait from 2004, loosely after Irena Ionescu - note extensive body hair,
which I didn't always consider to be specifically 'masculine' (or at least 'unfeminine') - and still don't

Very rare early full-body shave from 2004

In many of the new works to date, I have been trying to define the space between the erotic and the pornographic - to consider where one ends, and another begins, at least for my own personal practice. The question has been addressed countless times and will continue to be argued no dobut for as long as these genres exist, but my specific point here is to create something that for me at least exists in the realm of the erotic, being that which is deliberately poised to elicit a certain type of response, but by ambiguity, hiddenness or the reluctance to exhibit complete revelation or explicitness, stop short of that which can truly be said to be pornographic. As an art historical example: Picasso's 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' may be rightfully termed erotic, but I fail to see how 'pornographic' can be a justifiable description, unless a viewer finds irresistible attraction to female figures shaped like shoeboxes. For me, the erotic may or may not be explicit but one requirement is essential: that the viewer utilise their imagination to some extent. Whether it is to consider what lies beneath a flimsy wrap, what the other side of a figure might look like, or the story behind a specific scene or pose. The erotic must embody more than a mere presentation of skin or flesh, and may be ambiguous, playful, teasing, coy or quite blatant - but this, I'd say, is necessarily tempered by 'something else', some element of hiddenness. Pornography tends to rely upon total openness, literally "leaving nothing to the imagination", both in the specificity of sex as well as gender - and by blurring this line by simply being myself, my aim is to mystify that aspect, cast it into shade, and focus upon a 'semblance' of being that is both of itself and hinting at something else. In a sense, I may even be creating a kind of visual mythology, perhaps influenced by the often Classically-inspired photographic works of Joel-Peter Witkin, and my own studies of alchemy, Gnostic and pagan systems. My habit of hiding from view the genitalia both of myself as performer ('Untitled Sculptural Objects', 'Endura' and 'Lateralus'), and characters I draw (cf. 'Nip n Tuck', 'Ambiguous Content'), is not borne out of coyness but as a further means to this end of presenting the ambiguous, the possibly-this-but-also-possibly-that, a gendered form that is one or the other, or both, or neither, or many. 

Removing the area of the breast from any zone of visual interest - illustration from 'Sinister Rouge' (2020)

In the same way that my comic-book feminine characters often wear black T-shirts which flatten and obscure any form, detail or outline of the breasts beneath (a traditionally hyper-sexed element of mainstream comic-book art - and even lots of subversive, underground and radical art too), I believe that the current art-practice trajectory is an exploration of this 'blurred line' between concrete things, hard-and-fast either/ors and this-or-thats - a notion I now recall playing briefly with over a year ago, with a small work made early in my MFAAH (2020) entitled 'The Blurred Line', and which may indeed have been the early foundation for current art practice:

The purpose here was to literally blur the lines between genders, and the perception of gender  - what makes a gendered photograph? Is there such a thing as a gendered pose? The presence of the guitar signifies the posed nature of performance, after Bruce McLean's “Nice Style” (his 1970s “World’s first pose band”) and the accordingly striking, yet empty, gestures employed by those in the public eye. The blurred image is rendered as the indefinable, the ambiguous - echoing the self of the artist who exists in a 'blurry' position between gender poles. The binaries of black and white are deliberately manipulated to create a 'middle ground' of actuality, a 'grey area' of subdued polarity – in which the artist exists as an ambivalent individual who oscillates between, yet is composed of aspects of both, these poles. These images grew out of Gerhard Richter's painterly blur technique used, e.g, in “October 18 1977”.