Four short, personal bios of artists which have influenced this work and research to date.
CASSILS
I was introduced to the work of Cassils during my undergrad General Foundation year, via the performance piece ‘Tiresias’ (2010) – which had a profound effect upon my nascent ideas of performative video art, and exploring my own lifelong genderfluidity through artwork. The transmasculine/androgynous physique of Cassils prompted me to rethink the inherent structure and outward aesthetic form of the body, specifically what I now refer to as the ‘non-binary body’, and their form also resonated both within me as owner of a physically questionable form (a weight-trained biological male, with incronguent psychology expressed through altered modes of appearance involving makeup, hair and clothing signifiers), and externally, as an artist whose representational forms (portraits, drawings, illustrations) often repeat and reinforce the very blurry line which I see between the genders and which I now, more than ever before, am determined to portray. My experience of, and interest in, weight-training and bodybuilding continues to this day and still very strongly informs my physical aesthetic sense. Having my eyes opened to the truly androgynous form of Cassils – as a transmale who successfully creates not only a regendering of their physical form, but seems to aspire to a point that is almost beyond gender – has enabled me to see beyond the limited bounds of taxonomies and even biological science (hormones and weight-training as human agents in the reformation and restructuring of the Self).
‘Tiresias’ helped me to analyse the discourse of the Classical/Renaissance body from a 21st Century aesthetic perspective and in the context of transgender studies, where biological determinism, often based around genitals or secondary sexual characteristics. is still used to label and define human forms and their place in the socio-cultural/political pyramid. Cassils’ physique is also more masculinized – even hypermasculine – than most cis males could ever aspire to, demonstrating the force of will and inner vision required to succeed in articulating such a response to their own inner sense of self. As gendered bodies are formed through social expectations (and assumptions informed by inherited cultural views, propaganda and other media), I see the act of regendering one’s own form not only as an extremely brave action (risking incomprehension, abuse, hostility or more besides) but as the embodiment of a post-humanist stance – a willingness to create and promote new forms, new physicalities, new psychologies – to progress beyond the limitations of the essentialist, outdated and binary-focused dualities which much of human thinking has become pre-occupied with. Cassils’ live work ‘Becoming an Image’ (2000), as a literal and physical embodiment of the process of sculpting – its combination of skill, physical force and effort creating a specific body of ‘residue’, much like the acts of traditional sculpting, or indeed bodybuilding, upon a mass of clay (the source material for the Biblical ‘Adam’, allegedly) of approximate comparable dimensions to a human body, and analogous to the process of bodybuilding. This concept of performed sculpture, both self-referential but also inclusive of marginalized bodies, continues to influence my own video performance ideas.
Their work ‘Pin-up’ (2011), a nude figure with genitals hidden and bold makeup applied, embodies a new category of potential desirability, as well as resonating with my own ‘phiz/phys’ theories of face/body aesthetics, and I will soon be planning a work (or series) in response to this, to explore the deeper research questions posed in my proposal.
ALLEN JONES
I recently discovered the early 1970s sculptural work of Allen Jones via the classic Laura Mulvey critique1 of them. Mulvey, whilst critical of the agenda behind the works, remains steadfastly focused on Jones' “skill in understanding fetishism”. Interviewed by Peter Webb in 'The Erotic Arts' (1974), Jones is asked about “Women's Lib supporters” who have “objected to...exploitation of the female as a sexual object, especially in your sculptures?” Jones' response is disingenuous, suggesting that the real issues at hand are actual inequality rather than the “trivialised” cause “when someone gets uptight about a piece of sculpture.” His argument that “when Goya painted a bloodbath, it did not follow that he condoned it2” is void, as Goya's 'Disasters of War' series is blatantly anti-war. Jones does not appear to be anti-sexism, and also disavows any notion of putting his own psycho-sexual hang-ups into his work. Yet Mulvey's analysis remains more insightful and honest than Jones' dismissal of his perceived obsessions – which I found remarkable giving their extraordinarily blunt imagery and subtexts, bordering on the obsessive throughout his career – not just in terms of the collecting of fetishistic source material (well documented both by Jones himself and others) but in the relentless re-rendering of the same recurring tropes and elements, so acutely observed by Mulvey. It is the sculptural pieces in the 'Women as Furniture' show which influenced me most in their objectification and fetishisation of the form – I saw in them the physical manifestation of the same mindsets which I had spent six months entertaining during my period of online adult webcam employment, allowing me to draw many connections, parallels and understandings from how the male gaze reads and constructs the Other (whether biologically female, or otherwise, in my case)3.
What offended me most about the Jones sculptures was their complete lack of character, personality, or recognition that these forms may actually have been referenced by – or refer to – entities with functioning mental faculties, reminding me of the vapid and bovine nudes of the later Renoir – dolls to be dressed and posed by the whims of men, a situation which resonated deeply within me. Drawing directly upon those experiences of online interactions, and informed by Jones' imagery, I’m currently working on a set of photographic works, using myself as the sculpture, in response to these disparate, chronologically distant, yet strongly connected mindsets and obsessions. The working title for these images, 'Untitled Sculptural Objects', refers both to my appropriation of some of Jones' poses as well as the kind of requests that might be made of me in the video chat room, the notion that as long as I looked pretty, did what I was told and wore (or removed) the right clothing and accessories, then my clients would be happy. The BDSM element was not uncommonly present either – Mulvey notes Jones' continual use of constricting, binding and stiffening artefacts upon his figures' bodies mirroring the (limited) accessories often requested in my interactions, and the accompanying presumption of roles embodying either submission or domination – neither of which I actively enjoy, seeing BDSM as just another binary structure to be interrogated and challenged.
ASA JOHANNESSON
As a young contemporary artist who sets out to challenge fixed, binary positions in their work, Asa Johannesson was suggested to me by Dr. Sandra Plummer during my undergrad dissertation research4. I communicated with Asa during my writing process, and their response to my request for more information went on to create several of the foundations upon which my whole practice, if not much of my worldview, still rests, especially:
a) their open challenge to traditional perceptions of gender, and the aesthetics of physiognomy in particular;
b) their desire to present queer subjects without conforming to expectations of what ‘queer’ ought to look like (viewing ‘queer’ as just another label – see (c) below);
c) their references to the photographic/physiognomic works of Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon, both of whom I went on to spend some considerable time researching. As groundbreaking as their work may have been, it also underpins a great many problematic elements in socio-cultural discourse of what is gender, what is a certain type of person, and why taxonomical reductionism of human subjects still persists, often based on small, even laughably arbitrary, details (what exactly is a “feminine nose”? Or a “male chin”? Can such a thing be drawn, reproduced, without producing an obvious stereotypical pre-assumption?)
With classmate photographer Annalisa Davis, we produced a series of photographic portraits with me as the subject, informed directly by this research, and three of this series were exhibited at the Generator Projects ‘Queer Dot’ exhibition in September 2019. Asa’s photographic portraiture seeks to capture very distinct individuals, not types, in an effort to show the meaninglessness of labels and taxonomies, as well as the shifting ground upon which queer subjects often base themselves: fluidity, variety, violent opposition to stereotypical norms, as well as illustrating a rethinking of ‘queer’ itself. Through their depictions of Otherness, her work has threads in common with the works of Joel-Peter Witkin, another portrait photographer who has helped to promote noncomformity through his “transgressive” representations of corpses, amputees, transgender, and obese bodily subjects, “types” still considered to be “obscene” according to some classification systems (for example, United States laws on what forms of pornographic representation may be deemed legal – or otherwise).
Asa’s works were one of the first to clearly show me how deeply critical theory could inform practice, without necessarily manifesting overtly or obviously in the works themselves, and this understanding allowed me to begin to formulate my own, subtler, streams of underlying reference points with (I hope) growing sophistication and subtlety of application and interpretation. Rather than simply rejigging what Asa has already explored, I began to modify my original agendas on my own terms and filter them through my very personal historical narratives (whether closeted, ‘out’, responses to me whilst being on or off the LGBTQIA+ scene, etc.) and seek to create work that, whilst personal in its origins and emotional connections, could also speak to others and achieve a reaction from those in similar circumstances, or with shared past experiences.
LAURA KIPNIS
The work of Laura Kipnis, as a video artist and essayist, encompasses and interrogates many of the socio-political areas with which I'm currently engaged: aesthetics, gender, representation, sexual orthodoxies, binaries, and popular culture. While not an apologist for pornography per se, she acknowledges its place in society and discusses its value as possibly more democratizing and inclusive than other art forms: her analysis of the notoriously tasteless Hustler magazine details the ways in which that publication exhibits a Bakhtinian sense of the grotesque in its piquant desire to overturn sexual, societal and political mores, and its role as an angry, blue-collar counterblast to the élitist, power-fantasy trappings of Playboy. Some of Kipnis' theorizing in this regard provided me with an intellectual and theoretical grasp of the world of sex work (specifically the interchange of sex and capital, power and control, and the normalization of 'non-standard' – hitherto “obscene” - bodies).
As an artist who also theorizes, her ability to produce the kind of art she writes about (and vice versa) is extremely useful from a working student's standpoint, with her essays clearly informing practice – the two being inseparable, her video works (presented with full scripts and stills, in Ecstasy Unlimited: On Sex, Capital, Gender and Aesthetics; U. of Minnesota Press, 1993) come across as psycho-analytical treatises on contemporary culture, via a variety of forms: montage, animation, narration, acted drama, performance and documentary techniques, often juxtaposed for satirical or ironic purposes. Her ability to seamlessly and intelligently blend high theory with low culture, re-mapping new meanings and interpretations onto stock scenes and references, allow her works to carry not only considerable weight, but accessibility. Whilst now a mainstay of mainstream video and documentary work, in the late 1980s, such 'mash-up' techniques of editing and video collaging were somewhat more avant-garde and distinctly postmodernist. Kipnis' work – low-budget, impassioned, personal yet also culturally relevant and challenging, has features in common with the early feminist video art of the 1970s (itself an inspiration to my own practice of no-budget performance films), where often the artist (as in my case) was also director, performer, editor, and technician. In her knowing use and appropriation of standard cinematic and documentary techniques, as well as a broad knowledge of critical theory, her works also echo the early avant-garde films of Laura Mulvey and Peter Woollen (Penthesilea, Riddles of the Sphinx) by operating on multiple levels simultaneously: as artworks, as films, as socio-political statements of intent and criticism, whilst knowingly playing with (and sometimes deviating from) the expected methodologies of the very medium represented. Kipnis' 'cut up' video technique resonates within my own practice, wherein I may employ the same tactics of appropriation, re-editing and juxtaposition of often incongruous elements to create deliberate visual and sonic dissonance, though ultimately harmonized by broader, underlying meanings, and related (or contrasting) symbolism. Her quirky and intelligent pieces continue to influence my tendency to operate in a 'post-postmodernist' idiom. By this, I mean that I recognise that the clichéd postmodernist tropes of mash-up, pastiche and knowing irony have long since run their course, whilst redeploying such strategies to intentionally level the playing fields between high and low culture, often using the very tools of the prevailing orthodoxies against them.
1‘Fears, Fantasies & the Male Unconscious, or 'You Don't Know What is Happening Do You, Mr Jones?'’, in L. Mulvey, ‘Visual & Other Pleasures’, MacMillan, London, 1989. pp. 6-13
2 Both refs. in P. Webb, ‘The Erotic Arts’, Secker & Warburg, London, 1975. pp. 372-3
3 Observations and lines of thought which are currently informing research into what I term the “pornographizing gaze”, wherein users can and will extract pornographic content from seemingly almost any source. More of that later...
4 I also cited her work in my MFAAH Humanities essay, semester 1, 2020.
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