Lo-fi thoughts and Shonky Reflections on 'Fragments of a Punk Opera'

 Working intensely on recording, writing, producing and filming more instalments of the 'Fragments of a Punk Opera', I've been reminded of the DCA exhibition 'Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness' which I attended in 2018, between 2nd and 3rd years of my BA. I recall the show making no impression at all upon me at the time, but it obviously stayed with me as I immediately thought back to it in terms of the form and methodology of that which is loosely-formed, rough, somewhat klunky - yet nonetheless still engaging or, I hope (with regards to my own work), at least entertaining. 

I routinely refer to my music adventures as 'lo-fi' and this is an accurate description, but it is also in keeping with the DIY aesthetic which is a signatory on the original punk manifesto. My method is basic, not by choice but by virtue simply of how it is: with no training in music production, I use basic means to create pretty basic music: the drumkit requires several hundred pounds worth of new skins and cymbals, and the main crash has a 2-inch split in it. Punk did everything it could with the rock 'n roll basics of bass, drums, guitars and vocals - one or two groups even incorporated keys, as I do too, albeit in a faux-jazz idiom which is still, I would claim, of punk heritage, as I have no formal or any other understanding of jazz and associated music theory (if it qualifies as jazz at all then it is genuinely 'shonky jazz', no?).

These jazz-ish moments may owe their inspiration to the classy sophistication of pop-musical geniuses Sparks via the smart-ass lyrics, but the production and attitude is more suggestive of the quirkiness found in early Adam Ant or the Stranglers. The works also reinterpret aspects of two previous (if not in fact still ongoing) bodies of work, 'Weimar' and 'A Punk Trilogy in 4 Parts': decadence, cabaret, dark humour and occasional historical and social references which all bounce around between the other recurring interests and obsessions - narrative, character, relationships, betrayal, heartbreak...and occasionally art, as in this track:

Herein, musical professionals will note missed beats, fluffed notes, flat vocals, hammy performances all round - none of which is done on purpose to simulate crude or raw aesthetics as a shallow raison d'étre, but is simply the results of "doing what I do". Sometimes the fluffs aren't noticed until well into the mixing process, and digital music editing can only fix so much. The Band Aid-patched results are therefore in full concert with the 'shonky' concept: I make music because I love it: it's an affair of the heart, not of the intellect. I do not try to polish the results too much: too-slick production would only highlight the fluffs and clangers even more, and make them sound much worse. A rough, hissy punk demo track can get away with a lot more than an HD production of 'Moonlight Sonata', in which instrumental perfection is expected.  

A recently-recorded track with a Sham 69 vibe, 'I Swear', humorously bleeps out the occasional swear words until the ad lib rant at the end, in which the f-bombs slip past the completely out-of-time censoring devices, thus not only calling into question the authority of the censor (which was wielded as hamfistedly during the original punk era as much as any guitar in the hands of countless young would-be upstarts), but also celebrating the subversive punk voice itself: despite all attempts to shut us up, we are still shouting:

For we know three chords, and we therefore are a band. 

As a working-class phenomenon, punk highlighted the élitism of the music world of its day, and levelled the playing field of musicianship (going on to inform various subsequent waves, and Grunge, in later decades). My body of work does not shun the economic divisions of society. The two main characters start off penniless, and possibly end that way, too (assuming they even survive). And does the millionaire gangster sit beneath a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II for reasons other than mere affection? Economic concerns are writ large across the 'Fragments' project, starting out from the reality of my need to replenish an entire drumkit and invest in a recording microphone (rather than merely yelling at the laptop), to the desperate situation of the two main characters, Steff and Jen. However, the levelling and liberating tendencies of technology, which originally allowed punk to flourish at street-level, have permitted this artist to realise their creative endeavours in a tangible form, in the same way that cheap Xeroxing technologies of the 1970s allowed fans and writers to publish and distribute their own 'zines, and no longer had to rely upon the stuffy music papers of the day for opinion and information.

Weimar Poetry Cycle: all 4 Parts

 

Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop all had their Berlin phases - and I think I've just concluded mine. Or at least one of mine. The concept has hung around for quite some time, although it has only been realised (and realisable) in recent months*.

This is the 'movie' edition incorporating the pieces 'Berliner Girlz', 'Marlene and Me' and 'Die Freudlosse Gass', with extra opening footage to give the whole work a cyclical feel, and the fourth 'satyr' segment, 'Weimar, Schmeimar...' which concludes the story on a bittersweet, but still light-hearted, note. I'm still seeking the opportunity to perform the whole sequence live some day, somewhere...though probably not on a smoky backlit stage.

There's a nice physical (as well as the obvious thematic) link to an earlier live work, my Brexit-inspired take on a couple of 'Cabaret' classics - in that both this and 'Berliner Girlz' uses the same prop chair.

*The first segment, 'Berlin Girlz', was actually first written some years ago, and incorporated as part of a one-act play within the text of my one professionally-published novel to date - whose very title shows that my Berlin phase has been in progress for some time, as well as its inescapable connection to retro erotica, as the novel is set in an establishment which dates from the Weimar period.

'Weimar, Schmeimar...'

Fell in love with a Berlin girl so many years ago

Strange to think how many things since then have come and quickly gone.

As Mr Hitler warred, and went,

and everyone was left quite bent

so out of shape, we thought we’d never

even write poetry again.

Yet, here we are.

A people scattered – we refugees.

We left the city on its knees

and fled, like all the lucky ones

Across the sea – all hail Manhattan.

Then one day, some day

I saw her, somewhere

Standing on a smoky backlit stage

She was on the path to self destruct,

I mean, man – she was really fucked

I grabbed her and I took her home with me.

She told me of the path she’d wandered

Prostitution, drugs, time squandered

How she almost ended up impaled

or, so she says...in vague detail

like a butterfly, in some entomologist’s case.

But it’s 1952, and – hey!

We’re in the land of opportunity

And every night, we dance together

To those old songs that brought us hither

And knock back whiskey, telling tales

of the nymphs and satyrs of the Domino house

Just down the road from the old White Mouse.

But all those days have gone, my friend

And while I hate to come across as picky -

The fun has fizzled, liberty’s been redefined -

The only mouse around here is Mickey.

Prosit.

(MB, September 2022)

Writer's note: while the Domino is a fictional establishment, the White Mouse is not, and was a hive of extremely liberal performance art in its day. I first found it referenced in Donald Spoto's biography of Marlene Dietrich back in the late 90s, and the reference has kicked around my head for all that time. Maybe my next Berlin-themed venture will be to try to replicate some of the more risqué acts from that period, like those made notorious by Anita Berber.

Recent Developments and New Works, Plans, and Things

'Marlene and Me' dress rehearsal video still for Dundee Fringe Festival, '22

The last 6 weeks have been challenging, with all sorts of things happening: mostly good, but the Solstice was spent being hit by a chest infection as well as the need for emergency eye surgery. However, back on track again and to summarize everything:

21st May: Scottish TransPride in Paisley, Scotland:

June ('til present): submitting work (prose poem entitled 'Ravensong') to Cthulhu Books anthology call-out: Making Kin - Institute for Postnatural Studies The work is inspired by my studies of Old Norse and Old English literature, mythology and poetry.

1st June: a last-minute support slot at the Hunter S Thompson saw me premiering live one of my early 'lockdown poems', as well as an old standard:

15th June: performing brand new spoken word piece 'Stevie Nicks' (again at the Hunter S) which was directly inspired by the raw, emotional and very personal work of the headline act on the 1st of June:

18th June: public presentation of 'Welcome?', a BRAW Bursary recipient (in collaboration with ShaperCaper) in Dundee. My work consisted of a printed poster and 3 A5 flyers discussing international trans rights.

8th July: Presented paper 'Pornographics as Queer Method : Using Adult Online Entertainment as a Strategy for Developing Non-Binary Gender and Being' at the SGSAH 'Prospectives 22' online symposium. I'd planned to be away in Manchester that weekend hence the pre-recorded talk, but elected to stay home to better monitor my eye health, which allowed me to take part in the live Q & A:

In between all this action I was also able to rehearse and record the second instalment of my three-part 'Weimar Cycle', a tribute to the decadent era of German art of 100 years ago, as well as the cabaret tradition and the general air of sexual and gender liberation which flourished at that time. This is 'Marlene and Me':

I have submitted proposals to perform this cycle live at both Buzzcut '23 in Glasgow, and (as a 2-part work in progress) at the upcoming Dundee Fringe in September. I've also submitted a handful of films to the 'Queer Art Now' open call in London. 

Public Works: BRAW Bursary Presentation, 'Welcome?'

 

The  past few weeks have seen me focusing on producing materials for this upcoming event, organised between Dundee dance company ShaperCaper and Dundee Pride, on Saturday June 18th:

BRAW Bursary Recipients — Shaper/Caper (shapercaper.com)

It's been very exciting and rewarding to have the chance to present public work which not only fits my current wider research (social and political attitudes to trans/non-gender normative persons) as well raise awareness of wider internation trans rights (or lack thereof). The work entails one poster (A3) plus 3 A5 flyers, in which trans characters from Iran, Russia and Colombia discuss the realities of living under their respective social and legal conditions. The project is an extension of a piece I had planned during my MFA in 2020, but due to lockdown, it wasn't able to happen. This opportunity has allowed me to expand the original project from a single flyer (focusing on Russia) to three in total.

The project is entitled "Welcome!" and also invites us to consider which nations around the world are more welcoming to trans and LGBTQ+ visitors than others.

Following the event, I wrote up this report:

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”.

Let’s Play Tag: The Impossibility of Porn as Performance Art in the Mind of Someone Lusting

(Additional: This article was written before I found the essay on pornographic tagging, namely 'Deep Tags' by Antoine Mazières, Mathieu Trachman, Jean-Philippe Cointet, Baptiste Coulmont & Christophe Prieur - which will go on to inform further thoughts in this area. Another retrospectively relevant article is 'Microporn in the Digital Media Age' by Joseph Brennan, which examines the consumption of out-of-context clips from longer works.)

The risk of having any work that explicitly displays the human form being re-appropriated by viewers for more salacious ends is, of course, ever-present, as Linda Neade reminds us, quoting Lucy Lippard:

“A woman using her own face and body has a right to do what she will with them, but it is a subtle abyss that separates men’s use of women for sexual titillation from women’s use of women to expose that insult.” (Lippard, ‘Pains & Pleasures’, From the Center: 125). Nead herself adds: “Women who used their bodies in performance art could easily be reappropriated for the purposes of male sexual arousal” (Nead, ‘The Female Nude’, Routledge, 1992, p.67). Nowhere is this made clearer than on the public porn site which employed me in 2020, www.Xhamster.com, where uploaded clips of nude performance art, mainstream cinema and television works, ballet, and even grand opera may be found buried under a plethora of tags which reduce all these works to their barest (pun intended) essentials – the idea that any naked (or partially so) female body is fair game.

Whilst seeking to counter viewer expectations of what this genre of work ought to depict, a browse through the tags applied to images and videos on any porn site can and will reveal that almost anything can or will be somebody's fetish – and will be enthusiastically shared with others of the same mind. The fascination with these fine details and the need to collect them is not reserved purely for material intended only to titillate. Spend five minutes browsing films intended for adults (as distinct from 'adult films') listed on movie review site www.imdb.com and study the tags which users apply to films for relevant, or interesting, content. To take one example¹, the 2010 remake of the 1970s exploitation feature 'I Spit on Your Grave' – a film which portrays a vicious gang-rape, followed by the victim's equally brutal revenge – users have provided, among many others (200+ in fact), the following helpful index of salient features:

“female nudity”, “sexual humiliation”, “arms tied overhead”, “sodomy”, “forced to strip”, “public sex”, “outdoor sex”, “woman stripped from waist down”, “video voyeurism”, “clothes torn off”, “panty sniffing”, “shotgun sodomy”, “public nudity”, “gun in anus”, “female star appears nude” and “nipples visible through clothing”²,

almost all of which (barring the obvious violent tags) are themselves categories and tags on any standard porn website, rather than aspects of a mainstream Hollywood feature that went on to spawn two further sequels to date. To take a very different example on imdb, 'Schindler's List', we find the tags: 'female nudity', both 'male' and 'female' in 'full frontal nudity' and 'pubic hair', and 'bare breasts' – somewhat more detail, I feel, than is necessary in warning viewers to the presence of potentially adult material (where 'strong', moderate' or 'mild' classifications of sex, violence, nudity etc. generally suffices on DVD and Blu-Ray sleeves), as if the grim true-life theme was not more troubling. In a final example, the 1993 Robert Altman comedy/drama 'Short Cuts', the top of the list of 'most relevant' tags are almost exclusively pertaining to female nudity and sex:

 

Out of the top 38 “most relevant” tags for that film (accessed 9/10/21) – see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108122/keywords?ref_=tt_stry_kw – 30 of them refer specifically to fetishistic or sexual elements, many of which tags, again, are also very commonplace on pornographic media. My point is that when works of non-pornographic intent such as this (though possibly still informed by the dominant patriarchal gaze defined by Mulvey) can be regarded by some users in a pornographic context and appropriated as such, the rhizomatic nature and structure of the male gaze and its pornographizing function is made evident: 3 out of 4 visitors to the imdb.com page for 'Short Cuts' deemed the tag 'no panties' to be relevant to a film of 150 minutes running time, chronicling the daily lives of multiple characters and stories. An alien visitor to our world, attempting to analyse such data, would be inclined to draw the conclusions that 'real' pornography was non-existent in human society and could only be 'sneaked in' to otherwise serious, mainstream works. Or put another way: those few seconds of clips which can be viewed in that manner, have already cropped up on pornographic video websites, alongside mainstream action as well as installation works by Vanessa Beecroft tagged as ‘public female nudity’, and have probably motivated the viewers of those clips to pass on their enthusiasm via the imdb.com tagging system.

The conclusions we can draw from these examples is that as anything can be fetishized, so too can any material, even with innocent intention, be sexualized, and sought out as such – what I refer to now as the ‘pornographizing gaze’. While this may perhaps not be news, the extent of its pervasiveness may be surprising. Where this is relevant to my current line of questioning, is in the ability for a user’s gaze to ‘pornographize’ or acquire the form of another, for purely sexual purposes, whether or not that is the intention of the individual, or media, under scrutiny. I have never actually (yet) thrown a drink in anyone’s face for up-front asking me in a nightclub what kind of genitalia I have under my dress (finding fear of a rapidly escalating situation to be the greater part of valour), but in the world of porn all things are permitted (within legal and website limitations) and all bodies potentially desirable. Desirability cannot be measured or quantified: let’s recall the pre-internet pornographic niches of ‘older’, ‘larger’, ‘pregnant’, ‘Asian’, ‘black’, ‘cross-dressed’, ‘obese’, ‘midget’ etc. subjects which go back decades and were catered to in material which was often classified as ‘obscene’ in the US and the UK due – I can only suspect – entirely to its associations with the grotesque and therefore its place outwith the accepted hetero-normative body ideal. That online pornography is now helping to flatten those distinctions cannot be denied, even if still within something of a fetishistic framing – at least the performers and models can no longer feel so marginalised as having their bodies stamped as ‘obscenities’ by government hands, and those who sell the publications which paid them, prosecuted. The problems exist, as I have found out myself, when those persons who own those ‘alternative’ bodies expect to be treated as persons, outside of any fetishistic, pornographizing system of sexual classification – and by virtue of simply being what they are, are conflated with objects of desire and titillation in other contexts. If a movie depicting a gang-rape and revenge on the perpetrators can entice viewers seeking hints of bondage, public humiliation and aggressive sexual activity, then it is no wonder why people in public places find themselves continually cornered and expected to play the roles which have been, in the minds of the gazers, thrust upon them. I understand this involves a paradigm shift in male-centric thinking, and along with my previous post’s suggestion that people quit judging others by arbitrary physical or facial features, I am asking far too much of the majority of the world’s population who think and act in these ways. But we must find somewhere to start.

1^{Chosen precisely because of its troubling subject matter, sexual violence (though nowhere as intense or graphic as the 1979 original 'video nasty') and contemporary attitude to such issues.}

2^{Not all the violent content tagged thus is, of course, directed against the central female character, as her revenge on the male rapists is eye-watering, and other tags do refer to this – but the implication remains that users, irrespective of their motives, gender, sexuality or expectations, seemingly seek out, or wish to share, such very specific details of filmic content,} and that a large number of these focus on prurient minutiae. 

 

Where have all the opinions gone..?

 As discussed recently with my first supervisor, I've already encountered one of the potential stumbling blocks in this line of research: we cannot force people to react, or interact, with a work, or with anybody else. Hoping to rekindle the kind of debates and discussions on gendered aesthetics I used to have on Deviantart.com when I was a member there 2007-2017, I rejoined a month ago and posted the three images comprising the '3 Questioning Cartoons' series. Despite several hundred hits apiece, zero comments and a few likes each (which I would more than happily trade for actual feedback) are all that have been received to date.

I later posted a photographic pinup work from the first semester of my MFAAH and discovered that even the trolls now no longer have the courage of their own convictions:

Whilst getting into fiery debates about self-image, gender identity and trans rights isn't my best idea of a good time, part of the point of this research is to understand why people insist upon thinking a specific way, and the fact they continue to do so is why this research exists at all. It occurs to me that 'comment culture' and feedback have become deprecated in recent years thanks to other social media and forms of interaction, where all that matters is a single 'like' or 'dislike' click, and number of 'hits'. That, and the tendency for many to explode with fury at the slightest provocation, the mindset which sees any form of response (that is not 100% cuddly-positive) as beyond offensive and a flagrant breach of their human rights, and it's no wonder that some just choose to not enter that arena in the first place. But being in the arena, one expects to be met with furious tigers and big guys swinging swords, not tumbleweeds and distant, unanswered cat-calls.

I must be one of the few artists or internet users around who longs for the days when people just posted whatever the hell they felt like saying...all in the interests of research, of course.

The Beginning: The Proposal

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

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.