In response to Performing Identity by Elizabeth Bell

In my video work, I always come from the place that there is no "I", there is no "her", there is no "it", there is no "us", there is no "we. Everything is interchangeable. As women move from the marginality of the domesticity of the home, raising children as their only identity, what do they retain of that of that subjugation? They literally wear the carpets, they are the shiny tiles of their floors, they are stainless steel refrigerators that match the microwave. Women have not moved enough from the architecture of their identification with their biology as a kind of destiny. The womb an interior, the home an interior, the purse an interior, women is still in the womb, pushing a shopping cart, or mopping a floor, still confined to that architecture, still looking into her purse. When will she ever leave the house?

A girlfriend and I were talking it out freely the other night, I off handedly started a rap, " my dick is a home"As a queer woman my proverbial relationship with a virtual phallus, can be quite playful, but I was surprised that a playful mixture of my own subjectivity would also still place the genitals in a home, or about a home, or to somehow create a womb for the phallus. That even in my most playful schism I would domesticate my projected phallus?

If we consider this postmodern idea of subjectivity in flux, then in we not only criticize the need for an identity, but how do we escape these deeply held ideas of our identity, if while coming up the stairs to the man the "honey" that was home all day. And yet I tried to develop this idea of the masquerade that women in the workforce have to play. And don't we want women to be these walking beauty pageants, making all our erotic dreams come true, emotionally available, bringing home the bacon, and yet also be respected at work, we send so many conflicting messages, that I would assume we would want women to wear bikinis at work?

But what if the self is fragmented, always in translation, then is there is so much space for these deep ingrained beliefs about self to emerge. I can not seem to shake the home, I can not seem to move from the domestic space. If we really want to dismantle these master narratives, and yet they are so much a part of the infrastructure, what is the thorns and what is the difference between what is the castle and the thorns?

4 Sarah Haskins- I am targeted- chocolate

Yes, the sounds I make, we make, at such moments of sensuous transcendence, the gasps, the cries of joy, the wordless moans, are like those you hear through the paper-thin walls of roadside motels. That's not sex or better than sex. It's just another wonderful moment a man or woman can share with all the same senses we use to register the sensory input of making love.
Don't think of it as sublimation. Focus on what is, not what isn't. Just follow your pleasure. If one desire is not available at the moment, seize another. Sneak out of the office early and go to a movie. How dangerous. What fun. Have a Dove Bar. How wicked.
seriously no think of sublimation-chocolate is not sex nor love. hot on the heels of a bar of chocolate?
In Freud's classic theory, erotic energy is allowed a limited amount of expression, due to constraints of human society.
Sublimation is the process of transforming libido into "socially useful" achievements, mainly art.

chocolate sublimation

machine gun face

ABout Face/

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Entertainment

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• panty hose
 
• washing machines
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• amy winehouse
 
• rifle
 
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ABIGAIL SOLOMON-GODEAU

 In the final analysis, photography... is ever a hireling, ever the hired gun. 

 That erotic and pornographic photographs were produced almost from the medium’s inception should come as no surprise. That it does so is a testimonial only to the near-total elision of this fact from the standard histories in the field... Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that almost as soon as there were viable daguerreotypes, there were pornographic ones. 

 ... photography, like all camera-made images such as film and video, effaces the marks of its making (and maker) at the click of a shutter. A photograph appears to be self-generated—as though it had created itself. 

 Contemporary art photography, or, more specifically, what I would term mainstream art photography, represents for the most part the mining of an exhausted lode. 

 While the aesthetics of consumption (photographic or otherwise) requires a heroicized myth of the artist, the exemplary practice of the player-off codes requires only an operator, a producer, a scriptor, or a pasticheur. 

 Art photography, although long since legitimized by all the conventional discourses of fine art, seems destined perpetually to recapitulate all the rituals of the arriviste. Inasmuch as one of those rituals consists of the establishment of suitable ancestry, a search for distinguished bloodlines, it inevitably happens that photographic history and criticism are more concern with notions of tradition and continuity than with those of rupture and change. 

 Whatever the elements that differentiate an art photograph of a female nude encountered in a museum from a photographic pin-up, both types of image may posit a similar—if not identical—set of subject/object relations, and induce or foster fantasies that are themselves symptoms of the unequal ordering of sexual difference [in a patriarchal society]. 

 The teaching of photography tends to be cordoned off from what goes on in the rest of the art department. So while young painters are reading art magazines and often as not following to some degree developments in film, performance or video, photography students are reading photography magazines, disputing the merits of documentary mode over self expression, or resurrecting onto the fourth generation an exhausted formalism that can no longer generate either heat or light. 

Soft bubbles

Sometimes I wish I could give more of myself. My hands hold an immense amount of ability and sometimes I just sit and watch the moments go by instead of reaching out. Where is my concern for the other when I am in graduate school learning how to help the other? Beauty can come in many forms... even in a simple smile across the room. It can feel like you've been given these special little soft bubbles of kindness. That can't be too hard....

Tangeled Webs of Connectedness

anger, stop, change
understand, empathy, tolerance

One without the other only lead to the wars without a resolve

LITANIES TO MY HEAVENLY BROWN BODY

FUCK YOUR WHITENESS
FUCK YOUR BEAUTY
FUCK YOUR CHEST HAIR
FUCK YOUR BEARD
FUCK YOUR PRIVILEGE
FUCK THAT YOU AREN’T MADE TO FEEL SHAME ALWAYS
FUCK YOUR THINNESS
FUCK YOUR MUSCLES
FUCK YOUR ATTRACTIVE FATNESS
FUCK YOUR SHAMING ME FOR NOTHING
FUCK YOUR ACCUSATIONS THAT I PRODUCE SHAME
FUCK YOUR READING ME AS A CARICATURE
FUCK YOUR DESTRUCTION OF MY PERSONHOOD
FUCK YOUR MARGINALIZATION OF MY IDENTITY
FUCK YOUR JUDGING ME FOR SELF CARE
FUCK YOUR ABILITY TO BE ASSERTIVE
FUCK YOUR LACK OF SOCIALIZATION TO BE A SUBMISSIVE
FUCK YOUR ASKING ME TO PRODUCE SAFETY FOR YOU AND NOT MYSELF
FUCK THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT I EXERT TO GET LESS THAN ENOUGH CONSIDERATION
FUCK THAT THE AMOUNT OF SPACE I TAKE UP IN THE WORLD IS CONSTANTLY QUESTIONED
FUCK THAT PEOPLE THINK I’M A SLUT
FUCK THAT YOU CAN DEMAND ATTENTION
FUCK THAT I’M WILLING TO GIVE YOU WHAT I CAN’T HAVE
FUCK THAT YOUR VALUES AND YOUR ACTIONS NEVER MATCH UP WHEN IT COMES TO ME
FUCK THAT I CAN’T EXPECT ANYTHING FROM ANYONE
FUCK THAT THE AMOUNT OF WORK I PUT INTO THE BEAUTY OF MY INTELLECT AND MY TALENT IS STILL NEVER ENOUGH

AMEN


BLESSED ARE THE SISSIES
BLESSED ARE THE BOI DYKES
BLESSED ARE THE PEOPLE OF COLOR MY BELOVED KITH AND KIN
BLESSED ARE THE TRANS
BLESSED ARE THE HIGH FEMMES
BLESSED ARE THE SEX WORKERS
BLESSED ARE THE AUTHENTIC
BLESSED ARE THE DIS-IDENTIFIERS
BLESSED ARE THE GENDER ILLUSIONISTS
BLESSED ARE THE NON-NORMATIVE
BLESSED ARE THE GENDERQUEERS
BLESSED ARE THE KINKSTERS
BLESSED ARE THE DISABLED
BLESSED ARE THE HOT FAT GIRLS
BLESSED ARE THE WEIRDO-QUEERS
BLESSED IS THE SPECTRUM
BLESSED IS CONSENT
BLESSED IS RESPECT
BLESSED ARE THE BELOVED WHO I DIDN’T DESCRIBE, I COULDN’T DESCRIBE, WILL LEARN TO DESCRIBE AND RESPECT AND LOVE

AMEN



by Mark Aguhar
my friend and queer bitch goddess gender genius

we all need to understand our places of privilege,
we all need love and acceptance

i am thankful for all of it and all of you

Open white space

How do we measure ourselves? How can we self-check our bias when it comes to the race, gender. class...etc. issues that we talk in this class?

Relational experiences and situational factors create individual perceptions, and there is no right or wrong when we come to theses issues.

We can study and try to understand  the differences, but 'understanding' cannot be the same "understanding." Thus, I think how we approach to 'understand' each other-- is the important issue.

Every single time when we face the "other":men and women, black and white, rich and poor; homosexual and heterosexual..... If we are on the one side(born with, chosen), then having the 1st-hand experience / having the authentic understanding of the other side is hard--more likely impossible. Because the 'understanding' cannot the same. With that in mind,  approaching to the 'other' as another "self" to have 'authentic listening' is possible if we allow ourselves to see the issues from both sides.

The cards I have made above have little dots with different colors: red, blue, green and yellow. Some has only one dot; some has two dots , some has threes dots. Then there are ones that has no dots.

We are born like these cards. Some are white, some are Asian, Some are African Americans; Some are Hispanics.... Some are homosexual; some are heterosexual....etc. and maybe it is easier to understand if we have the same color of dots..same # of dots with the same colors.....meaning if we have the same cultural background, the same race, the same gender...whatever we talk in this class.

But there is more empty white space that we can share, add into each other, as each of us create our own lives. The dots are very small-- and that is what we are born with and the rest are what we make out of from our experiences with the time. I believe that how we use this open white space in our lives is another way to have the 'authentic listening' and checking our positions with bias.

Women In The Media

Is this really what women do in jeans? If so, I guess I am way out of the loop. This is an ad for Calvin Klein jeans and the idea behind it, I am still not sure. If laying half naked with water splashing up on you sells jeans, than this is new to me. There are so many things wrong with this image I do not even know where to start. Maybe the fact that they are half naked, or that they are smaller than a size zero, or the fact that they are in a sexualized pose. This is just one of many ads I came across in a magazine that hyper sexualize women as well as objectify them. I found this image in response to what Erika had brought up in class about women in the media.

Fluid Gender

The readings and discussion made me really consider gender as something less solid and more transient than what I grew up understanding. In my response art, I wanted to create a piece that evoked the sense of moving through spaces with ease, with fluidity. I went to a college that very much celebrated diversity, especially in sexuality. Androgyny was a common style and there used to be a running joke of the "Smith Cut", when freshman would chop off their long locks. It was very different from the town I grew up in which was fairly conservative and where the gender roles were more set.

Thinking back to high school when establishing gender (or rather, the "right" gender) seemed the utmost important made the performance reading easy to relate to. Putting on the costume of what was most fashionable, applying the makeup, playing the part...all of it was really a performance of gender. The reading also cited the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Coming from a dance background, I was already familiar with this dance company of ballerinos in drag performing classical ballet and also a symbol of fluid gender. On the surface, I see them as a satirical comedy but the fact that they can pull it off so well further shows that gender is something we can put on, something that we can perform.

Intersections & Inequality

There was a year in undergrad where all but one of my friends came out as either gay, queer, lesbian, or trans. It was somewhat of a domino effect that shifted our dynamic and caused a large change in the way we thought, acted, and spoke to not only one another, but anyone we met. When we started school together we used to play a game. Since art school was full of genderless blobs (sorry if I'm misquoting you Chance), we would find someone and ask each other: male or female? after that we would debate post-op or pre-op. We understood it was a terrible game, but it was fun and we didn't think much else of it until one of our own came out as trans. First there was a shift in our language. We would use male pronouns and his male name. Then there was a shift in our thoughts and behavior. There were a lot of things we didn't expect to change. We were all still friends, we loved and accepted one another for who we were, but a person's personality changes when they change their hormone levels. My friend was going through a transition, but so was our friendship and that was the most challenging adjustment.

Being one of the only people in my group of friends that identified as heterosexual made me somewhat of an outsider. As much as I was loved and accepted by my group of friends, I wasn't experiencing what they were and they needed a group of people who could. This is where I connected with the Granzka article. I have privileges as a heterosexual woman and there were some things that I just wouldn't understand. Luckily this just called for an expansion of our group of friends into the trans community.

Something that Chance said was something that took me a long time to learn, "it can be difficult to understand the layers and ranges of gender expression, gender, and sexuality that are represented by queer bodies (not just for observers, but for the queer person themselves)". For example, telling my queer roommate she is a lesbian isn't going to make her any less confused about her sexuality. My need for clarification only got in the way of understanding a person's feelings. Sometimes it is more important to have respect for people's choices than to fully understand them.

I see gender and identity as a performance. I see how my friends act around me and how they have to act in public spaces (on the train for example) where they may not feel safe to express themselves. I also perform my gender differently at home than I would at school or with friends. We should have had to read Judith Butler this week. Everyone read Judith Butler. The end.

Justice is being who he is in the world.

This is a piece I made in response to Johnson's "Quare" Studies article and his discussions of his book "Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South". I couldn't help but think about a close friend who is a black gay man living in the south. Having known him over the years, I have seen what I consider to be his "real" identity, a relatively quiet, nerdy, intelligent college graduate. In public, he adopts the identity of the sassy and flamboyant gay best friend, a role society has deemed acceptable for gay men in large part due to media and shows like Will & Grace. Why is this performance accepted while others are not? When will my friend be able to stop performing and just be who he really is?

Like Johnson said, in the past these performances, like those of Little Richard, challenged oppressive systems and pushed ideas surrounding masculinity and femininity. In contemporary society, witnessing his daily performances has me feeling that he is not contributing to social justice but instead stuck in a role he does not want. It's as though he has been pushed out on stage during the middle of a play and now has to continue the performance of a character that black gay men of the south developed before he was born.

My response art is a funeral for this role as I think it is time to push beyond this performance and write an entirely new act. It is time to accept people for who they are. Society is afraid of my friend's true identity that he must perform in a the ways that we understand (being an over the top, flamboyant gay man) in order to be accepted. A gay man living outside of this performance is not as easily understood, especially in the south, and what we don't understand we often interpret as dangerous. The knife resembles something dangerous but is in fact a harmless plastic toy. Covered in glitter, this symbol represents society's views of what constitutes a gay man: stylish, glittered, colorful, sassy, dangerous, and sequined all of which need to be challenged and put to rest.

Just for Funzies

I made this piece last week in response to the readings and discussions we had centering on homosexual/trans/gay/queer/quare topics.

With this piece, which I call "Glitter Fuck," I express my anger and frustration over what little emphasis is placed on queer issues in this course, in this program, in this school, and in this society. 

I also attempt to answer the question "So what?" in regards to a critical analysis of our readings and discussions. "Queer" can mean a lot (or nothing) to different people, depending on how you define it. What it's really about, though, is queer bodies. By that I mean bodies that highlight differences and sameness in unconventional ways. Bodies that desire contact with other bodies in ways that are commonly deemed perverse and amoral. Bodies that don't easily fall into specific cultural categories. It has a lot to do with how a queer person sees their bodies fitting in (or not) with the bodies around them. 

So what? So we carry this queerness with us until we find other queer bodies and create our own culture. So we are read as gay or straight or butch or femme or male or female or odd or normal depending on the context and the other bodies around us. And we keep on loving the bodies we have and the bodies of other queer people. 

One way that queer bodies can disrupt the flow of social interactions is in the very way they blend, bend and "fuck with" gender cues and roles. Much like the GenderBread person Iu-Luen showed us last week, it can be difficult to understand the layers and ranges of gender expression, gender, and sexuality that are represented by queer bodies (not just for observers, but for the queer person themselves).

I feel that a lot of societal homo/trans/queer-phobia comes down to disapproval of the basic ways that queer people choose how they present themselves in public and who they have sex with and how. For a fundamentally conservative, religious and prudent society, a lot of Americans spend a LOT of time thinking about how queer people fuck. 

In a society that is supposedly about freedom of choice and pursuit of happiness, the very ways that queer people try to find that happiness is often demonized, tokenized, and misrepresented. And, more commonly and perhaps more dangerously, ignored.

I found this website that is a really good resource for social justice/lgbtq/identity/respect/etc. terms and issues, and it has a nice little (incomplete) glossary. It not only talks about queer, trans, gender, and sexual orientation themes, but also touches on issues of power, privilege, race, and general "otherness."

Also, please recognize that I do appreciate the time spent in this class talking about everyone's perspective on queer issues, and this little essay is mine. 



<------ please enjoy this rainbow chain (a response to the talk about layers of identity)

Do we welcome every thing?

I am very happy that we have been assigned to read "Opening Therapy to Conversations with a Personal God" by Griffith. This is not so much due to my personal spiritual views but more so because of mental health professionals' patterns to remain an arm's length from religious conversations. I believe this should be further examined by art therapists especially who
have the advantage of using unspoken words and symbols for healing. What I have experienced through my personal journey of faith is that it is very difficult to explain what "God" means to me, what it feels like when I know "He" is "present," what faith looks like, what religion looks like, and much more. However, if you were to ask me to draw these answers or use symbols as an explanation, I would be able to do so. With this in mind, should we restrict our clients by not allowing them to express religious/faith/spiritual symbols among all other symbols (earthly, familial, personal, emotional, etc.) that they live by? An important supporting quote: 
"Clients...have told us that they want to reflect on their spiritual experiences in therapy, and that they feel fragmented by attempting to delegate psychological, relational issues to conversations with their therapist and spiritual issues to conversations with their priest, rabbi, or pastor." As therapists some of our main duties are to allow our clients to reflect on their life and to help explore parts of their identity. Why, then, do we want to stay away from religious/faith/spiritual conversations if it can cause a client to feel unsupported, silenced, and fragmented? All clients will come to us containing "parts" to their "whole" and religion/faith/spirituality may be one of those parts.

Another thing to consider: what about those therapists that do not consider themselves religious, faithful, or spiritual in any sense? Griffith offers a great way of viewing differences in this type of situation. Our assumptions, or as Griffith puts it—"certainties," must be diminished. There is an incredible number of ways that we can judge clients or assume wrongly based just on clients' religious denomination, therapist's personal experience, and overall religious language. For example, following are three links of Google searches using these three titles. As you look through the pictures, note that different symbols, aesthetic qualities, subjects matters, and concepts are depicted.

"Religious art"

"Faith art"

"Spiritual art"

You can see that no matter the denomination, language used, or historical context, all people view their beliefs differently. We cannot possibly be experts or experienced—nor might we want to be— in religious beliefs, and hopefully, our clients will not expect us to be. However, this is the perfect opportunity for a "competent" art therapist to share in learning more about our clients and enhance their therapeutic experience.

Performing Identity

I really enjoyed reading the chapter from the theories of performance again. I believe we read it in Cathy Moon's class last semester. Chapter 7 was about performing identity and how no self is completely stable and known to the self and everyone else. I'm not sure I agree with that 100% but I did find it interesting to contemplate and I do believe the self is constantly shifting in relation to what is going on around it. The chapter went on to say that we perform social roles to answer who we are in history. The author questioned if people even have a real identity under our masks we put on in our interactions with other masked figures. Or are we all just performing for each other? Another point I found especially interesting was the one questioning the foundation for gender. Can gender be performed? "Our sex is biological and fixed but our gender is socially constructed and malleable" (Bell, 2008, p. 175). I'm not sure that I agree that gender is performed necessarily but I do think that gender is sometimes crammed down kids throats when they are younger. Not every little girl wants to wear all pink when they are little and not every little boy wants to play with trucks.
With the art piece I made in our class I explored performing
identity in a few different ways. I wanted to explore it more in depth had we had a bit more time but I may continue it on my own. I started with the idea of a paper doll. I began making clothes for the doll. My doll didn't have an identity or a gender. It was just a person. I made some clothes that could be masculine, it could be feminine, it could be either and I made some hair that could also be either. If I had had more time I would have also made some 'careers' or 'identities' to go with them. For example, I would have made one
a student, a taxi driver, a hair dresser, a policeman, a homeless
person, etc. I would have given them identities that I see often in  

Chicago. All the clothes and hair I made are interchangeable and
come on and off the plain doll. The doll can become whoever I or
anyone else wants it to be at any point or time. It makes me think of this show I saw a few times called, Dollhouse, a scientist found a way to "wipe" a person or their characteristics that made them who they were and 'imprint' them with a new personality. So they essentially had a new identity and didn't even have to think about
it. It made me think about how much easier it would be if I didn't have to pretend every time I was around certain people. If that

technology actually existed, we wouldn't have to put on different 'masks' or perform different 

                                              identities. We would actually believe we had those characteristic because we had had our own personalities wiped from our memory. It sounds

crazy but if we were performing identity for the majority of the time, it sounds like that would make it much less stressful. But I would like to think that at least part of my identity is fixed or stable somewhere inside me. I can't say that I am 100% certain, but I would like to hope. I would have to say that over the nearly 25 years that I have lived, there are many characteristic that have remained unchanged. So I would have to say my hypothesis is likely true; some of my identity remains somewhat secure, unwavering. Though there are many more years in my life to challenge that. I guess I'm still not exactly sure. I am constantly challenging myself. And I'm not sure that characteristics of my personality changing would necessarily mean my identity is unstable or just changing because those around me are having an influence on it.

Does it matter what we "are"

When we were doing our in-class art, I was thinking about the story Suellen shared about the Thai boxer and when Seyeon asked if we have any famous celebrities that were transgender and I couldn't really think of any, so I made some. I was looking through the usual "beautiful people" and taking them apart, matching them up to what We as America would not think was so beautiful, the "un-normal imperfect." After listening to the speaker though I realized how important it is not to care what to call or label someone, all that matters is that you are considerate to ask what they prefer. We are all just people, that want to be treated like a kind human being, right? This makes me remember being in probably middle school and a professor in my town had a sex change operation from a male to female. In a small, conservative town, this was big news. I probably joined in the crowd, laughing, telling friends "I saw It yesterday." It's hard when memories of ignorance (mostly due to age, but also social upbringing) sting from embarrassment later in life.

Social Experiments by Kotex

Laura's post had reminded me of a recent Kotex commercial I've seen that basically calls advertisers out on all the things they "think" women like. While I couldn't find the commercial on YouTube, I did find some interesting "social experiments" by Kotex that also address similar issues.

Elizabeth & Hazel

I found Elizabeth and Hazel to be a very refreshing book. Although the end was a bit strange for me. Elizabeth must have been very strong and courageous to find it in her heart to forgive Hazel and form a connection with her. I'm not sure, if it were me, if I could ever have ended up having any form of contact with Hazel after all that had happened even if she only did it for the photo opp. So I did a watercolor image of Elizabeth and Hazel and their faces are overlapping. Where they overlap I used blue and red: the anxiety of the color red and the calmness of blue create a tension in the space between the figures. The tension shows all the tension between Elizabeth and Hazel throughout the book and the threads sewn through the paper represent how the characters lives were woven together.