Collaborator Wish List

This is my desert island wish list, excluding friends or any actual collaborations past, present or future.

1. Adam Cooper, dancer
2. If not the above then Anton du Beke
3. Ben Drew aka Plan B
4. Or Paloma Faith?  I'd have to meet them both to make the final decision.
5. Forced Entertainment
6. Rose English (I'd just be her apprentice)


This list broadly takes in my perception that I think I could actually work with these people.  I haven't included visual artists because if I love their work, then I'd just be assisting them, or being a fan around them.  I genuinely interested in the idea of making artwork from people outside my own art bubble.

Actually, I really like working with other people, and I'd love to work closely with dancers, perhaps a showgirl? also, I'd love do something in a theatre setting, so perhaps a writer too?

Right, well, let's see what Santa brings from that lot...

New Work

Wow, this year is hurtling to an end.  I always feel like I did barely anything over a year, but perception and reality are strange things.  I'm not sure how my year went, I only know what I did not achieve.

I did however have a comforting moment of putting some large new work on the walls of the old S1 Artspace before they moved.  Sadly, only for a meeting with my supervisors and also I stepped in and showed the work to my students in my crit group when the student showing texted me concussed in hospital.  The work is an ongoing pairing of theatre interior and text bios.  The bios are sourced from 1930s cigarette cards or online web presences.  The work represents the public viewing spaces of the showgirl and theorists connected to my research.  The project will be ongoing throughout my PhD.

Reading and Writing (the Problem)

Argh!  A couple of years ago, I felt called upon to really investigate problems my practice threw up (and I mean that phrase).  So I started to write; to articulate my thoughts in written form.  Now, as I undertake this PhD, I read and write regularly.  And the more I know and learn, the more I am embarrassed about anything I have ever written!  Can I believe my own front?!  I've found some lovely articulations of the problems and thoughts I wish to work through, so I shall quote them here.  With great thanks to their author, Craig Owens, whose words here could be re-interpreted into a manifesto.  Perhaps I can get into dialogue with them later.  Or, I need to confront the problem and take up the challenge of the last sentence.

Among those prohibited from Western representation, whose representations are denied all legitimacy, are women.  Excluded from representation by its very structure, they return within it as a figure for—a representation of—the unrepresentable (Nature, Truth, the Sublime etc).  This prohibition bears primarily on woman as the subject, and rarely as the object of representation, for there is certainly no shortage of images of women. [ … ] In order to speak, to represent herself, a woman assumes a masculine position; perhaps this is why femininity is frequently associated with masquerade, with false representation, with simulation and seduction.¹

What can be said about the visual arts in a patriarchal order that privileges vision over the other senses?  Can we not expect them to be a domain of masculine privilege—as their histories indeed prove them to be—a means perhaps, of mastering through representation the “threat” posed by the female?  In recent years there has emerged a visual arts practice informed by feminist theory and addressed, more or less explicitly, to the issue of representation and sexuality. [ … ] [W]omen have begun the long-overdue process of deconstructing femininity.  Few have produced new, “positive” images of a revised femininity; to do so would simply supply and thereby prolong the life of the existing representational apparatus.²

1. Craig Owens (1992) Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press pp 166-190, p.170.

2. Ibid p.180.

My Song (With Thanks to Laura Mulvey and Kander and Ebb / All That Jazz)

1.

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,                                                                                               

pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.                                     

The determining male gaze projects its phantasy onto the female figure, which is sty~~~led accordingly. 

In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at

and

displayed,

2.

with their appearance coded for strong visual impact                                                                         

so~that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at~~~-ness.                                                            

Woman displayed as sexual object is leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin ups to strip-tea~~~se,

from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to

and signifies

male desire. 

3.

Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle and narrative.                                                            

(Note~however, how in the musical song-and-dance numbers interrupt the flow                        

of the diegesis.) The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film,

yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a

story-

line.

Gilda's Song: Put the Blame on Mame

1.

When they had the earthquake in San Francisco

Back in nineteen-six

They said old Mother Nature

Was up to her old tricks

That’s the story that went around

But here’s the real lowdown

Put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

One night she started to shim and shake

That brought on the Frisco quake

So you can put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

2.

They once had a shootin’ up in the Klondike

When they got Dan McGrew

Folks were putting the blame on

The lady known as Lou

That’s the story that went around

But here’s the real lowdown

Put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

Mame did a dance called the hootchie-coo

That’s the thing that slew McGrew

Put the blame on Mame, boys

Put the blame on Mame

Judy Confronts the Audience

Go on, laugh, get your money’s worth. No one’s going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents’ worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of? We know it’d the thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We’d laugh right back at the lot of you, only we’re paid to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make your screamingly clever remarks. What’s it for? So you can go home when the show’s over, strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you. I’m sure they see through you just like we do!^[1]

---

[1] Judy’s direct address to the audience in Dorothy Arzner’s (1940) Dance, Girl, Dance [film], RKO Radio Pictures. 

Watching the Vegas Showgirl

Whilst in Vegas I watched the following shows; Crazy Girls, X-Burlesque and Vegas The Show!  The first two were small scale revues.  Crazy Girls (http://www.lasvegas-nv.com/crazy-girls.htm) featured a variety of female dancers, some with excellent training and performance-personality, whilst others who seemed to specialise in their boob job.  I was unfortunate enough to get a front-row seat, which meant that I felt like my gaze was on view to the audience, and the dancers, I became self-conscious.  Wonderful dancing meant I could get over myself, but a large foam penis-prop used to sit on in one number made me so unbelively embarrased and made the whole show tacky, rather than knowingly tacky in a guilty pleasure way. However, the show was fun overall.  


X-Burlesque was a lack-lustre amateur job, nothing burlesque about it (http://shop.vegas.com/shows/showtimes2.jsp?show=1007#show_review).  Totally unworthy of the word burlesque.  The dancers were standard, with little charisma, and the numbers felt they owed much to the R'n' B video genre - if only they could be competently danced.  Pretty darned awful.


Vegas The Show! (http://www.vegastheshow.com/) proved even Vegas can have moments of self-reflexivity, and this large-scale musical looked back on the past glories of the town and quite incredibly, paid tribute to Sammy Davis Jr who had to fight incredible overt racism in order to enter through the front door at a venue in which he was top-billing.  A wonderful old-style revue to put a spring in my step.

Special Collections Archive UNLV

Went to University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) special collection to meet the women who started the oral history archive there, and read some of their transcripts http://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/) .  The testimonies of the various Las Vegas showgirls were amazing, and addressed such wide issues from technique, upbringing, travel and visa arrangements, racism in Vegas etc.  They make for amazing reads and I managed to photocopy some of the best.  This made me wonder about using appropriated interviews too.  I’m not sure I have to be the interviewer, I’m just really interested in the voice of the showgirl.  It still doesn’t quite answer the question of what I will do with the interview material, but it got me thinking about it.

Watching the Parisien Showgirl

I saw the show at the Lido (http://www.lido.fr/us/cabaret-paris.html) and had great fun.  It was so camp its indescribable.  They feature showboys in their show as well as showgirls, and I have to say they just made me cringe (I’m cringing so much I cannot bring myself to type a description of their worst costume).  A featured act was a male acrobat who performed on two long bits of material.  He was incredibly strong and flexible and his costume was a small pair of white shorts.  I was interested to think about this.  Through the use of his body, he displayed both a masculinity (strength) and femininity (fluidity in his movements and flexibility), this routed his performance outside of camp, somehow and located him in some sort of more serious object-of-desire place, in a way that the showgirls operate.  The showboys, on the other hand, are total camp, in a way that sort of negates their skill and makes them look like a Butlins act.  They are not any sort of object of desire, they are, as far as I could tell, a tacky joke.  Of course, I have no access to the spectrum of responses that a gay male spectator might have, and who knows, perhaps they function as an object of desire for them.  My point is, for me, showboys, no.  (From other performance instances I can say, male showgirls, yes).

Watching Crazy Horse (http://www.lecrazyhorseparis.com/) I lost my visual innocence.  The cabaret featured a troupe of female dancers, who performed butt-naked except for a very small strip of what looked like black gaffer tape, strategically placed. Although there was an audience roughly evenly split between men and women, I felt transgressive watching it, as though the whole spectacle was directed towards a male spectator and not me.  It was by far the most knowing caberet-revue I have seen.  It reputedly crosses over with burlesque as earlier this year Dita Von Teese was their featured artist.  However, I think this says more about Dita’s hetero-normative position within burlesque that she can cross over into more overt stripping contexts, rather than Crazy Horse’s closeness to burlesque. 

I felt that the show did a number of things in terms of styling and choreography that took the whole thing far closer to a gentlemen's club dance context.  For example, the lighting and choreography dissected the bodies so that we saw perhaps, only legs performing.  I found the amount that we did not see the faces of the performers quite shocking.  There was no opportunity for the performers to ‘send-up’ the performance with their faces in darkness or out of view.  I found this the hardest aspect to handle.  I also felt that the repetitive use of the arched-back position that pushes the bum out moved the performances away from mainstream theatrical dance technique (which is often clearly visible in burlesque performances and particularly at the Lido) and more towards of gentleman’s club stripping.  I realised watching the Crazy Horse that I actually need to watch strip shows featuring lap and pole dancing so that I can write about the gaps and overlaps between the different styles of performing I’m interested in.  The show also featured some numbers that felt really disturbing and uncomfortable, for example a solo performance with a dancer who commenced her number tied up in ropes, and then used the ropes as props to perform on.  It’s S&M references felt shallow and quite frankly, anti-women.

The featured act was a male tap duo, which came as a blessed relief.  Fully clothed, the two were fully spot-lit, used their faces, audience interaction, humour and a number of different tap dancing ‘quotes’ to create an entertaining number.  And then we had to return to the strobe-lit naked women.  It was like our one moment of fun.  The seriousness of the naked women was alienating, I longed to see some smiling faces!

Glamour Etymology

“The word glamour (magic charm, alluring beauty or charm, a spell affecting the eye, a kind of haze in the air) comes from the Scottish term gramarye (magic, enchantment, spell), an alteration of the English word grammar (any sort of scholarship)” http://ewonago.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/etymology-of-glamour/

I want to be a theorist.  I want to be a showgirl.  These two desires, which I try to reconcile, are brought together in the etymology of glamour.  The glamour-spell affecting the eye.  The spell of the viewer cursed to interpret what s/he sees.  We can never believe what we see, because we are constantly trying to peer through the haze of our own projections onto what we see.  The haze can never clear, we can never see something on its own terms because we are not mechanically viewing devices; cameras.  We are interpreting subjects, condemned to only ever see through our own flawed eyes.  

The Subjectification of Leigh Ledare's Mom

Review of Leigh Ledare: The Confectioner's Confectioner, 16th April - 5th June, Pilar Corrias, London

Leigh Ledare’s ongoing photography work generously reveals the relationship he has with his mother.  In the recent solo show at Pilar Corrias fragments from his childhood, notes written by Tina/Mom and himself make explicit some elements of their relationship.  Tina/Mom’s thoughts on models is a beautiful ode to the creativity of the photographer’s model, her informal hand-written will expose the love and trust she places in Leigh.  A narrative develops through the notes; the relationship with Dad ended, and Leigh, in some way become Mom’s man/boy.  She talked to him, revealed herself emotionally and physically.  As a ballet dancer, she was trained to be invested in her body, her artistic tool.  This is the back story.  One day, Tina/Mom asks Leigh to photograph her, to record her aging, vulnerable body now, before it is too late, before the flesh decays into an unphotographable state; before it can no longer be the object.  And so Leigh dutifully does.  Complicit in this recording, he is the third person in the room whilst Tina/Mom gets it on with Leigh-substitute boys.  Her acts performed for Leigh, a performance for his benefit.  Does she want to arouse Leigh?  Make him jealous?  Or push him to reject her out of repulsion for her sexuality, her aggressive exhibitionism designed to ensnare Leigh in an Oedipal game.  Does she want him to throw down the camera and fuck her, pushing aside his replacement?  Sometimes she is naked and alone, still enjoying her sexuality, but without a partner, less performed.  If Leigh did not record this, if he did not have his camera in the room, how would he have reacted?  How did he react, used as Tina/Mom’s sexual documenter?

Which answers the question, how can a sexually explicit photograph of a woman present without question the subjectivity of that woman, before or even preventing the objectification of that woman?  Through the Oedipal narrative, Leigh becomes less the exploiting photographer and more an equal participant with the subject.  The two locked into their fixed positions.  The captions with the photographs, descriptively position the image contents.  But even without such contexts, within the image frame, the faint silvery traces of stretch marks on Tina/Mom’s stomach testify to her mother status and jar with her version of maternal she is therefore enacting.

Leigh reaches beyond this project to challenge his own position from outside this mother-son courtship.  Understanding the plane of representation as ‘the site of the trauma’, the place in which his Mom revealed herself to him, but in a sense foreclosed other possibilities of their relationship, he places himself in Mom’s position by re-enacting her fantasies by being the fantasy for other women.  Leigh becomes women’s object, the Leigh-object: a gift for mother?  Leigh-photographer becomes Leigh-model relinquishing the responsibilities of the lens.

In The Archive

Today I wore white cotton gloves and handled photographs in the research room at the National Media Museum in Bradford. I am looking at two kinds of glamour, a very perfect one, with dreamy colours, courtesy of Walter Bird, and a slightly more real one, from the Daily Herald archive.  The reportage of dancing lines, rehearsal stretches, promotional poses on beaches/airports/streets outside venues.  Something real slips into the photos unnoticed, working against the artifice, tearing a whole in the glamour.  For example a plaster on a bare foot on a girl in a line standing on some driftwood on a beach and a hole in some fishnets, close to the camera.  In a 1956 photo of Tiller girls resting during a ‘Royal Command Show’ rehearsal, rest their legs (neatly) on the chairs in front.  Underneath one pair of fishnets are white ankle socks. 

Walter Bird's photographs however, construct a perfect glamour, the glamour of day-dreams.  Working before the WW2 he used an expensive colour process, Vivex, which I believe is one contributing factor to their loveliness.

There does seem to be a glamour peak in the 1930s.  By the 1950s, something, ‘common’ appears to have been invented, is it the film, cameras, lighting, hairstyles, costumes or make up?  Obviously technological changes in one or all of the above contribute to an erosion of the glamour aesthetic.  Which leads me to wonder, what and who makes glamour?

A Note I Wrote to Myself in Preparation for My Degree Show in 2001

How to present the 'Take Out' project is not a question of how to present the photographs, but how to present my intentions.  The 'hanging' of the piece has become more crucial and more integral to the work.  How the practicalities are negotiated reflects on the work.

I must not aim for perfect or bombastic just because its a "show" (ditch the tap dancers then) but must think of how the idea is best translated into 3D space.

They All Had Glamour

Sometimes I get so confused. I don't know where to start and start in the place I know: the middle.  I know for certain that I was trying to piece an idea from out of the tangle, I had to get hold of the thread and follow it, pull it apart from the others.  I knew it involved photographing; portraits.  

I have to get my camera out, I have to practise with it, what if I have forgotten how to work it?  What if I can't borrow lights and a tripod?  Will I have to buy my own?  I don't think I can, I blew all my money on three 1950s style wrap dresses, which are en route over the Atlantic now, they sent me an email.  

What if I can't work this idea loose, if it sticks together with all the others like cooked spaghetti left in the pan?  I won't be able to tell Jaspar about it, he will think I don't get ideas, that I don't work on them; he will think I don't think.  

I was in the theatrical bookshop off Charing Cross two weeks ago, there was a large book I wanted, but I was erming and ahhing about the cost: £25, I didn't know if I could afford it; but I wanted it and I didn't get it.  On the train home, I realised how important the book was, I realised I had to take glamourous photographs, not of myself, of the other residents.  They are pre-selected you see.  I don't think I knew when I was on the train that I was going; I just hoped.  

The book was called "They All Had Glamour".

The Personal is Political!

Here are the first few paragraphs from the introduction of 'Sisterhood is Powerful' by Robin Morgan (1970) Vintage Books

"Introduction: A Woman's Revolution

This book is an action.  It was conceived, written, edited, copy-edited, proofread, designed, and illustrated by women... During the year that it took to collectively create this anthology, we women involved had to face specific and very concrete examples of our oppression, with regard to the book itself, that simply would not have occurred in putting together any other kind of collection.  Because of the growing consciousness of women's liberation, and, in some cases, because of articles that women wrote for the book, there were not a few "reprisals": five personal relationships were severed, two couples were divorced and one separated, one woman was forced to withdraw her article, by the man she lived with: another's husband kept rewriting the piece until it was unrecognizable as her own; many of the articles were late, and the deadline kept being pushed further ahead, because the authors had so many other pressures on them--from housework to child care to jobs.  More than one woman had trouble finishing her piece because it was so personally painful to commit her gut feelings to paper.  We were also delayed by occurrences that would not have been of even peripheral importance to an anthology written by men: three pregnancies, one miscarriage, and one birth--plus one abortion and one hysterectomy.  Speaking from my own experience, which is what we learn to be unashamed of doing in women's liberation, during the past year I twice survived the almost-dissolution of my marriage, was fired from my job (for trying to organise a union and for being in women's liberation), gave birth to a child, worked on a women's newspaper, marched and picketed, breast-fed the baby, was arrested on a militant women's liberation action, spent some time in jail, stopped wearing makeup and shaving my legs, started learning Karate, and changed my politics completely.  That is, I became, somewhere along the way, a "feminist" committed to a Women's Revolution"

New Pointe Shoes

I don't know, I can't explain, I don't have answers.  I found a new ballet class, with a good pointe class after it, and I did it again.  I wore my Gaynor Mindens and they were too tight.  So I bought a new pair. Half a size larger, and with a wider box.  I am 31 and I bought another pair of pointe shoes.  Part of me thinks it is practice; dancing ballet and pointe.  And another part of me despairs.  Oh but then they first part of me thinks - ha! I can dance en pointe in unexpected places, like giving a conference paper?

Dressing in An Image Based World

When I think back to life between 17-23 years, I think about how I managed to maintain being size 12, and also, certainly up to the age of 21, how much flesh I used to bare.  I also remember talk of images of young models, how inappropriate they were.  You see, I could not imagine an identity beyond being a young woman, so the constant images of young women I was surrounded by did not register; I saw my own identity amongst them.  And I also misread them, I thought they were saying, this IS you, this IS how you should be and look.  I saw the pictures in Vogue, Marie Claire or even dare I confess it, More, and saw them as blueprints to re-create.  It did not occur to me that these were outfits designed to opperate in the context of a photoshoot, not streetwear. 

And now I as I see girls in stripper heels braving the cold with very little on, I smile to myself.  One day, they will realise the benefits of long-sleeved thermal vests from M & S.

Is Objectification Always Bad?

I wondered this as I looked into a shop window, in Santa Paula, a small town in California that was my home for 10 months, with an 80% Mexican population. The window display was filled with Catholic figurines, like the Pope, Saint John Paul II with Mother Theresa. There were also a variety of Jesus on the cross figures, heavily decorated. I noticed that the Jesus figures were androgynous in both their facial features and the shape of their bodies. Utterly attractive, they seemed to embody both a masculine and a feminine perfection. It was as though the sexual availability of the naked flesh, and his tragic skin lacerations made the Jesus figure a fantasy space for everyone. It was then that I wondered if offering oneself up for objectification could ever be considered as a generous act.

Jemima Stehli

Jemima Stehli has taken up the position of the stripper in her photographs, whilst also locating questions of power in the artworld within a voyeuristic framework. In her series Strip (1999) she stands with her back to the camera, in front of a seated male, identified only by his job title, for example, ‘Critic’, ‘Writer’, ‘Curator’ or ‘Dealer’. A long cable release is visible in the male’s hand and in each photograph Stehli is in a different state of undress; caught in the act of stripping. The precise moment the photograph was taken during this private strip is controlled by the seated male, his power doubled through the status of his role in the artworld. And yet, he is the pawn within Stehli’s game. It is she that has created the scenario, it’s her concept, her brain, her skill and her body being displayed. She is active. The seated male is unable to not look, he must play the stooge. It is his level of satisfaction or discomfort that we see in the photograph. Is that us, the viewer looking at ourselves?

Me and Laura

Laura Mulvey’s essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ became some kind of remedial text applied with frequency to my impasse at CalArts. This well written and convincing text served to make me feel guilty about what I wanted to do in practice. It also became a gateway to Kaplan, Doanne, de Lauritis and Modeleski. I needed to make work and I had to read a lot of material in a short space of time. The voices merged into one and I became alienated and overwhelmed by their high minded approach. However, I was attracted to their certainties, the tone of voice so authoritative and sure. The tone and their attachment of the spectacle and pleasure in film which they actively disavow becomes something ripe for parody. The question is whether or not this is something I want to explore in my work.

Why I am not a dancer

Dancing has been my hobby for some 25 years. Over the last ten years I have considered my role in dance as a participant outside the normal trajectory. I am not professional-dancer material and so a career within it could not open up for me. Having performed on the Sheffield City Hall stage in the biannual dancing school shows, and then to collect my BA (Hons) degree, I perceived my interests converging in a rather interesting location.

With a chance encounter with some photographs, my art practice shifted to investigate some of the interesting problems I observed through my dancing. With my experience of wearing the most day-glo kitsch outfits as part of a line of dancers my perspective on spectacle is one of first hand experience as well as that of the well-informed spectator. I imagine myself performing as I watch dancers because I have performed.

When I went to CalArts to study, my regular dance classes ceased. For the first time in many years I did not have a regular dance practice. The pressures of the environment meant I lived in my brain, and I began to really investigate my stake in thoughts on the body, from an outsider position.

I am very happy to report I have now found some very challenging classes and I am confronting the reoccurring preoccupations in my art practice along side a regular dance practice.