Filed under: creative process, inspiration | Tags: annie sprinkle, billy castro, catriona sandilands, christopher kennedy, courtney trouble, drew deveaux, dylan ryan, erotism death & sensuality, georges bataille, jiz lee, karl cronin, laboratory for independent scholars, madison young, queer porn, shine louise houston, sketches, syd blakovich, travis mathews, twincest
I wanted to take the time to leave the trace of another constellation of ideas that are forming frames for me right now. In the midst of everything else I’m doing, I have also been lucky to find some intense inspirations. One of the most notable is work happening in and around queer porn.
I have written around some of these ideas on the blog for the Laboratory for Independent Scholars (the collaborative research project with Karl Cronin, Christopher Kennedy and myself). You can check out those posts here.
On that blog, I listed lots of the individuals involved with and responsible for queer porn that have quickly become heroes in my life. I don’t want to be redundant, but I do want to leave a trace, so briefly (with hyperlinks, which are anything but brief when blogging), they are:
Jiz Lee (genderqueer porn star, blogger, activist, artist, etc.)
jiz lee
Madison Young (porn star/director, gallerist, educator, etc.)
madison young
Shine Louise Houston (porn director/producer, etc.)
shine louise houston
Courtney Trouble (porn star/director/producer/etc.)
courtney trouble
Syd Blakovich (porn star, artist, activist, etc.)
syd blakovich
Drew DeVeaux (porn star, model, etc.)
drew deveaux, photo by rae threat
Dylan Ryan (porn star, academic, etc.)
dylan ryan
Billy Castro (porn star, etc.)
billy castro
Annie Sprinkle (one of the the original queer porn performers/directors/dreamers; artist, activist, sexecologist)
annie sprinkle
Travis Mathews (filmmaker, activist, artist, etc.)
These people are some of my many heroes.
I wish I could write a whole essay right here about why I think queer porn is a radically progressive force in our world, culture, society, etc. (I’ve dabbled with some of these ideas on the LIS blog), but the short version is that queer porn, among much else, demonstrates and performs bodies and sexualities in a way that substantially disrupts and subverts normalized heterosexist configurations of bodies, identities, sex, sexualities, and gender. By giving representation to bodies and acts that live at or beyond the edges of normativity, queer porn offers legitimacy and recognition of those lives to others who are living them . . . that’s not clear . . . what I mean is that one of the things queer porn does is offers a site of identification for those who live and perform their bodies and sexualities outside of the socially sanctioned and normative. But it also functions as a activism towards a public archive of such lives/bodies/sexualitites that authors our culture beyond the edges of the normative. It leaves a trace of some for all, an archive that subverts the notion that all bodies and people are a particular way (this is most notably a heteronormativity, but I would venture to argue that much of gay sexual practices, identities and representations have configured themselves as imitations and emulations–thus representations and reiterations . . . maybe even simulacra–of heterosexuality, thus constituting a homonormativity that continues to abject some lives/bodies/sexualities and sexual expressions/acts as unlivable; I think the efforts of queer porn disrupt these normativities as well). In this way, queer porn accomplishes in representations of sexual encounters, relationships, pleasures, etc., what I tend to strive for in my dancing life–a practice, experience and perhaps even representation of bodies of vast possibilities, bodies that know and become more rather than less, that form and reform within mobile, fluid edges, never stable and always in transition.
I have some ideas of how my work will begin to dialogue with practices in queer porn. Some of this will be explored in the forthcoming reconstruction of “Sketches of Shame” (discussed in my previous post), although I’m not yet certain how.
I also have become interested in how this work and work by these individuals beyond the scope of “porn” might become topics of my research (alongside arts practices by the Love Art Laboratory, Karl Cronin, and various Butoh artists). One such example is a project with which I have recently become completely enamored called Twincest:
Described on their site:
“twincest was a multimedia collaboration between two lovers, Jiz Lee and Syd Blakovich. They spent 4 years together documenting their interpersonal dynamics and intimacies through sound, movement, video, photography, body fluids, pain, aggression, meat, sex, and love. Founded in 2004, their art and performances not only strengthened their budding relationship, but also provided a playground for the more complex elements that manifests in love’s shadows.”
their manifesto:
“My blood brother/sister,
Bonded by bloodpissshitcumspitpussweat-andassjuice, we share a body/canvas/culture for projections of disjunctured identities. With you, I expose and archive the physicalities of the sorid, you are my twin conjoined through the technological extentions of the body, a desire for the same…
bleedng
wrpt in soild shts
fckd dry
Anx us
and dstrctd”
Traces of their work.
Syd Blakovich says on her website (which is distinct from the twincest project that she conducted in collaboration with jiz lee from 2004-2009): “My interest in movement based performance is similar to my interest in body fluids. It’s a dialog between bodies and the spaces they occupy.”
Which is completely ecosexual, as far as I’ve theorized it.
I want to write about this work. I need to study it more. I need to be in contact with Jiz Lee and Syd Blakovich at some point. I need to draw together supporting theoretical materials needed to discuss this work. I already think Bataille’s Erotism, Death & Sensuality has a lot to offer. I think Catriona Sandilands “Eco Homo” article has a lot to offer.
I’m thinking about flesh and fluids, permeability and that which permeates, transmission and that which is transmitted (this has to do with performance, performativity, writing, choreography, etc., in the metaphorical sense), but also the levels of the body which we (in dance, in society) don’t address. I remember reading Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s writings about Body-Mind Centering, and those writings referring to movement on a level of fluids and tissues and bones. I didn’t find it to be very precise, although I have heard from colleagues who are more familiar with that work that those who understand it intimately, it is incredibly precise.
As I talk about fluid bodies, how can I not talk about body fluids? The morphability/malleability/instability of bodies is at the skin, in the seeping and sloshing and squirting, the sweating, the threat of leakage, the “necessity of management” (or of an aesthetics of flesh, re: Sandilands) in an age of latex. As I write about sexual epistemologies (see the paper posted in previous post), how do I not discuss latex and liquids, the edge between safety and danger that is inseparable from how we must know/understand sex in this era, and how does that affect how we live/understand the world, bodies, identities, dancing, etc.?
And what does a dissertation begin to look like if these are (potential) figures to be considered: the Love Art Laboratory (Annie M. Sprinkle and Elizabeth M. Stephens), Karl Cronin and the Somatic Natural History Archive, twincest (Jiz Lee and Syd Blakovich), and Butoh artists such as Kazuo Ohno, Tatsumi Hijikata, and Yoko Ashikawa?
I’m not sure where any of these ideas/inspirations are going, but I knew I wanted to begin to leave their traces here.
I’ll keep you informed as to how they develop.
Yes.
I don’t have time to write about this video now, except to say that there is much room for analyzing the presence/absence/subversion of the male gaze, the disruptions of normative sexuality, the function of the video in discourses of war, domination, nationalism, discipline and punishment, transgressive sexuality, gender expression/identity, etc.
She’s done it again.
I’m not prepared to write about this yet.
I just needed to acknowledge it here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/arts/dance/02ohno.html
http://www.japantoday.com/category/entertainment/view/japans-oldest-dancer-ohno-dies-at-103
“I would love to offer you even something as tiny as a grain of sand. If only I could succeed in doing that, then I might fulfill my longing to share a part of my life with you. Isn’t it worth risking one’s life to offer something as microscopic as that tiny single grain of sand chosen from amidst countless millions? Take great care at all times. Even the most infinitesimal detail of the slightest gesture you make should be executed with loving care.
It’s never too late to start”
-Kazuo Ohno, from Kazuo Ohno’s World: From Without & Within
“My soul is turning to ashes.
If I breathe out
They spill from my body.
I breathe myself in and out.
My soul floats throughout the sky
As it turns to ashes and falls.”
-Kazuo Ohno, from Kazuo Ohno’s World: From Without & Within
“A great many people are constantly coming to life in me. Aren’t they reaching out to me in my day-to-day life as their souls permeate my body? That’s not inconceivable. Since each and everyone of us is born in and of this universe, we’re linked to every single thing in it. There’s nothing to stop us from reaching out and touching the entire universe.”
-Kazuo Ohno, from Kazuo Ohno’s World: From Without & Within
“We weren’t conscious of what we were doing as we devoured each other. On eating our fill, we both ceased to exist, leaving only love in our wake. Did I sacrifice myself as we tore into each other? He allowed me eat my fill. For my part, I ate as much I wanted. He offered me everything, and I likewise offered him all I had to give.
We can take each other’s life, just as we can allow each other to live. Knowing that we can’t extricate ourselves from the life cycle, we didn’t suffer as a result of following our instincts. We took great pleasure in being devoured. It was just as though we were frolicking about like children. We found gratification in eating our fill, by devouring each other.
And now, I live in a world where I strum this wooden floor beneath my feet. I live in a world where there are no boundaries between here and the hereafter.”
-Kazuo Ohno, from Kazuo Ohno’s World: From Without & Within
Filed under: inspiration | Tags: autumn quartet, bad romance, butoh, lady gaga, trio a, yoshito ohno, yvonne rainer
Somewhere between here:
and here:
and here:
and here:
Where is that?
Filed under: inspiration | Tags: journal of a solitude, may sarton, new year's eve
I have been reading May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude in full or in part annually for many years now. It makes a significant touch-stone in that every time I return to the text, it is changed (because I am changed). Passages strike me that I never found striking before, or they strike me in a markedly different way. Last night I read her entry on January 5th, and this passage echoed my present sensibilities profoundly. I wanted to share it:
“My own belief is that one regards oneself, if one is a serious writer, as an instrument for experiencing. Life – all of it – flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art. How one lives as a private person is intimately bound into the work. And at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked” (77).
That’s what I’m thinking about on this full mooned new year’s eve.
Filed under: Dance, creative process, inspiration, art | Tags: Synchronous Objects, William Forsythe, mark johnson, embodiment, ballets russes, improvisational technologies, prada, elizabeth stephens, annie sprinkle, lady gaga, judith butler, sexecology, femina potens, fame monster, moca, francesco vezzoli, frank gehry, damien hirst, bolshoi ballet, vaganova, diaghilev, jill johnson, george lakoff, amelia jones, heidegger, henry sayre, action painting, chihuly, tit print, yves klein, accessibility
I haven’t updated as recently as I would have liked. There is so much going on here at the end of the quarter, but I feel that there are several points that I want to quickly share. I confess, there is very little overt connective tissue between these various ideas, but the common denominator is that they are occupying my attention right now, and as I hope is clear through the overall journey of this blog, that which occupies my attention inevitably finds its way into influencing “the work” (i.e. my creative practice, the dances I make, the papers I write etc.)
So there’s Lady Gaga. There’s her new album Fame Monster that is blowing up my world.
And there’s its connection to ballet. On November 14th, Lady Gaga premiered her new song “Speechless” at MOCA’s 30th Anniversary Gala in Francesco Vezzoli’s “Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again).” She played a piano customized by Damien Hirst, wore a hat designed by Frank Gehry, was accompanied by dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet, who were attired in costumes designed by Miuccia Prada. That alone should be enough said. But you can read more about it here. And see a clip of it below. And an image.
So for my last week of teaching ballet this quarter (to beginner non-majors), I set all of my barre combinations to Lady Gaga, predominantly the new album, as an homage to this contemporary intersection of high Russian ballet and contemporary pop culture, it in itself an homage to the Ballets Russes and the work of Serge Diaghilev. After having taught Vaganova Technique all quarter, it felt appropriate.
I had an amazing opportunity to take a class with Jill Johnson, former dancer with William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet (among a list of other credentials). I relished the opportunity to revisit a way of moving that became familiar last winter working with Nik Haffner and Forsythe’s “Improvisational Technologies.” Today Jill emphasized the relationship between these ideas and classical ballet technique, epaulement as rotations in the body, and working rigorously in abstracting these various rotations and counter-rotations. It was not the same way of moving that I explore last year, but there was significant overlap, and moments of realizing how that experience last year changed the way that I move “naturally.” You can see me exploring some of those ideas in a piece I performed in October here.
I am also working on authoring a new paper, the working of title of which is “Body of Knowledge/Knowledge of the Body: An Analysis of the Presence of Embodiment in Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced.” I am working to construct a working theoretical definition of what is meant by “embodiment” from synthesizing writings by Mark Johnson, George Lakoff, Judith Butler, Amelia Jones, Heidegger, and Henry Sayre, among others, and then looking for the presence of embodiment in Synchronous Objects. I have found that there is a fairly widespread uncomfortability amongst dancers engaging with this dance-based research project. I think it has something to do with a sense that the knowledge that we know as our moving bodies has been extracted, transformed into date, and re-presented in forms/objects other than the moving body. My interest in the implication of embodiment throughout the project, in the site of origin (the dance), the collection and translation of the choreographic systems into data, the transformation of the data into alternative re-presentations, and ultimately (and perhaps most viscerally) in the viewer of the project himself or herself. While the paper is still in the works, I feel that there are implications of embodiment throughout the project; this is most acute in the viewing of the project. The project is an object to be viewed, to be understood by a viewer. It is a request for the re-embodiment of the knowledge being re-presented. I am attempting to describe that not only does the site itself necessitate the (embodied) presence of the viewer, but that the way in which the objects themselves are understood are through conceptualizations of time, space, density, movement, etc. that emerge from an embodied experience of the world in which we live. This is supported primarily by Johnson and Lakoff’s writings in Philosophy in the Flesh and The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. I’ll keep you posted on the paper. In the mean time, I hope you go and explore the site.
In the reading I’ve done in preparation for writing this paper, a gem of a resource was a book I came across by Henry M. Sayre entitled The Object of Performance: the American Avant-Garde since 1970. Sayre writes about the shift of importance in the visual art world from the art object to the performative act, and in doing so the shift of “presence” from the artist/object to the viewer of the object. He writes beautifully about the photograph emerging as a respected medium, a signifier of both presence (the viewer of the photograph, and even the photograph as an object itself) and absence (that which the photograph depicts). He also wrote about the action painting (re: Pollock, Krasner, others) as a significant shift, in which the paintings that were bought by museums and collectors were not the action painting itself. It was a thing concerned with the immediacy of the action; the painting acted as a trace, a document of the action, and yet an object itself. Like the photograph. Like Synchronous Objects. It has sparked some fascinating notions as I have engaged with visual art after this reading. Last weekend I saw a series of works by Dale Chihuly, mostly large glass sculptures. It was fascinating and exciting to engage this work as “movement traces,” the documentation of the actions of the glass artists (which, in Chihuly’s work, art already mostly interpretations of Chihuly’s “action painting” designs for the pieces), and even farther as potential “movement scores.” Visual art as movement score. Reading visual art as movement scores as a method for engagement. There is something there.
Speaking of art object as documentation of action, I just ordered a “Tit Print” by Annie Sprinkle. She posted on her facebook today that she just made another batch of them, and had them on sale today. They consist of large ink or paint prints using her breasts as her instrument. I think they’re lovely, a kind of Yves Klein way of revealing the body. And the fact that I am going to San Francisco later this month to interview Annie and Beth and see their upcoming show “Sexecology: Making Love with Earth, Sky and Sea” at Femina Potens Gallery.
One of Annie's Tit Prints
Finally, a little rant: I am exhausted about hearing about making art or dance “accessible.” I take issue with this word. Because it rarely refers to making art experiences available to the population. It most often implies that the art be constructed in such a way that the viewer can “get something out of it.” It is not about making the art itself accessible as it is about making a specific experience (or kind of experience) of the work accessible. I think it has emerged from the collective anxiety of audience and artist worrying that they have somehow misunderstood the art experience. And my issue is this: “accessible” implies that there is something to be “accessed,” something encoded that must be (able to be) decoded. It assumes that art is essentially communicable, that its purpose or intention is that the viewer understand or “access” the experience that the artist has of her or his own work. And I think that is simply not the purpose of art. My theory is also that we live in such a visually complex, communication driven culture that we spend our lives trying to “figure out” what we’re supposed to understand from images, advertising, commercials, etc. etc. etc., that we come to the art experience with that same pressure. It is my opinion that the art experience is perhaps the opportunity for reprieve from this way of engaging and understanding. The purpose is not to access the encoded meaning, but instead to engage with that with which you are presented and make it meaningful for yourself. Construct meaning rather than access meaning, using your experience of the dance or sculpture or literature or music, etc., as the materials by which you construct your meaning. In this sense, I am opposed to making art “accessible.” I am in favor of making art available. But I would like to do away with this language/concept that there is anything to “access” in art. It is there. You experience it. You make that experience meaningful for yourself using the materials before your as the materials of your meaning.
There. That’s my little rant for today.
Back to reading/writing about Synchronous Objects.
Filed under: art, culture, inspiration | Tags: annie sprinkle, blue wedding, eco-sexuality, ecosexuality, elizabeth stephens, lgbt, love art lab, marriage, queer, same-sex marriage, sexecology, venice
I apologize for my recent absence from my blog. For those of you who do not know, my computer crashed two weeks ago. It was under warranty and so the repairs will be covered, but going through the proper channels always takes time. For now I am borrowing friends’ computers wherever I can. Today I finally feel as if I have time to update my blog.
Last weekend was the Love Art Laboratory (Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens) Blue Wedding in Venice. I so desperately wanted to be in attendence, but financially that was impossible at this time. Today I finally came across images from the wedding, and I wanted to share those images with you. They are my joy today, and I hope they are joy for you as well.
I feel as if there is so much I can say about my perception of this work, and my evolving perspectives on the work of Love Art Lab. As I have written before, I think that their work represents something about inegrated living/loving/making, a conflation of creative practice, politics, ecology, sexology, sex and personal partnership, individual and communal identity, ritual and performance, and so many other elements of what it means to be human. As I experience this wedding vicariously, all of these things come to mind. But more than ever before, either because of the specific perspective of this documentation or because of my own artistic/scholarly concerns at present, I am aware of the politics of body morphologyand performanceand the unique subculture of body identities that I see represented in the documentation.
The images include a series of photos of Natalie Loveless doing a performance piece as part of the celebration that involves microfilament, dye, etc. I find it stunning, and so I have dedicated quite a few photos to it. This specific piece is might be central to the subculture of body morphology that I read through these images. The piece literally uses the body as the site for transformation, literally reshapes and recolors the body of the artist. I find that fascinating.
I think there is also an interesting question of costume . . . and suddenly I feel as if I am touching a new idea (for me). I have a perspective surrounding the body, that of the tension between the “social body” (the body as we present it and as it is perceived interpersonally in society) and the “actual body” (the unique morphology of the individual body). This is only one potential taxonomy for ways of looking at the body, and I think identity is situated somewhere in the midst of these. I am wondering as I look at these images where the concept of “costume” or even “role playing” might enter into this taxonomy. I am thinking of costume or role playing as a chosen social body that deviates from our regular social body, wearing clothes that are different than our regular clothes, make-up or paint that we do not usually don. How might costume enter the discussion of the politics of bodily identity? And what significance/implications (for the individual and the community) might there be in the space created by the Love Art Lab wedding celebrations for diverse body expressions, including costumes and role-playing?
These are scattered speculations that are sparked by these images.
I want to post a bit from the “Artists’ Statement” for this event:
“For our seventh wedding, and in our Blue Year, we will marry the Sea. We are passionately in love with her and desire to take care of her in order to help save her. We are eco-sexuals, meaning that we find nature incredibly romantic, extraordinarily sensual, and an exquisite lover. Additionally, we are “sexecologists,” who combine sexology and ecology, and we intend to make the environmental movement a little sexier.
Why marry the sea in Venice? During the Renaissance, the Doge (chief magistrate) de-
creed that, “Venice must marry the sea as a man marries a women and thus become her Lord.” So each year the Doge would go out on a boat and drop a ring into the water. But can people really Lord over the Sea? What is perfectly clear is that people do have the power to destroy her, and are rapidly doing so. We will follow the tradition of marrying the Sea in Venice — as two women who have moved beyond the dominant-male and submissive-female dynamic, as seductive eco-sexual artists, and as global citizens who care deeply about the welfare of our planet.”
All images are by Mark Snyder via facebook.
Filed under: culture, inspiration | Tags: choreography, cincinnati, citybeat, CS13, fashion, gaze, gender, matt morris, nathan hurst, urban regalia, videodance
Friday, 14 August, I had the opportunity to see the premiere of Nathan Hurst’s new couture collection “Urban Regalia” at his show “Off with Their Heads” at CS13 in Cincinnati, Ohio. According to the show’s facebook, “Urban Regalia focuses on a royal renewal of precious vintage finds, explores the reconstruction of former garments, and serves as a host for his [Hurst's] original design concepts inspired by a reinvention of historical regalia.”
I haven’t stopped thinking about this show since I saw it. I’m not quite ready to commit those ideas to type yet, but I thought I would go ahead and let you in on this inspiration in my world right now. Suffice to say that it was a brilliant first showing from a talented young designer/artist:
You can read Matt Morris’ article about Hurst and the show in CityBeat here.
You can also see images from the show at CS13′s facebook page.
Hurst just posted this video this week. Many of the pieces from the collection are on display. What I love most about it is that just as many of the pieces are appropriated and repurposed garments, their transmogrify is heightened further in their transgression of traditionally gendered morphology on the body of the designer. Just as Hurst engages in processes of “renewal” and “reinvention” and “reconstruction” of vintage finds, former garments, and historical regalia, their situation on the male body both further recreates the garments themselves, and recreates the meaning of the male body. Amazing:
I have an evolving ideology on the concept of the actual body and the social body. The actual body in my mind has to do with biological morphology. The social body refers to the contextual connotations that we associate with the body. The way it’s dressed, the way it’s depicted, the way we think about it because of its treatment in culture. Identity (including corporeal/kinesthetic identity) is situated somewhere in the midst of these. This seems to be the hazard of any sort of focused research: suddenly everything relates to your research interests, but I love how Hurst’s work and this video in particular relates to my interests in the relationship between the body and identity, and that relationship to the choreography of identity.
I don’t want to make too much of the video as a “video dance” (for those of you who are unfamiliar, “video dance” is a whole field of dance expression, choreography and dances specifically made to be explored/directed/displayed via video rather than live/stage presentation), but I do have critical responses to the movement in the video, not just the garments it animates. To be clear, I view the organization of the body itself as a kind of choreography, the carriage of the body, its stance, its dynamics. But there is also the movement itself. Of course the most obvious observation is its appropriation/mimicry of the runway format, the advance and the retreat, the gate of the “model” (and to be clear, I read it as meaningful that in this case the model also happens to be the designer . . . it relates to my perspective on the choreographer and the dancer (see previous post), a relationship that although different is similar in that it involves the creative action of one individual, the negotiation of that creative activity on the body of another, culminating in an event that represents the identities of both. Here, those individuals are the same, the creative activity of the one individual recreated/translated on the body of that same individual, all taking place in and through the site of the singular body), and the punctuation of poses both near to and far from the camera lens. The advance and retreat reads as meaningful to me: the retreat gives way to the advance, moving away gives the opportunity to move forward once more. It’s aggressive. I like it.
I’m also struck by the contraction of time. We know because the outfits change that a remarkable amount of time has passed in the filming, but we are given something far more surreal to be viewed, in which events occur one after another, like a series of fevered memories (memory being the space in which time becomes flexible, fluid, non-sequential). This contraction of time seems to reflect in video editing what has been done in the construction of the garments. It says, “Look again. And again. And again. Because what it once was is not what it is any longer.”
I am also struck by the gaze of the model/designer (can I add “dancer” if I am viewing the video as a kind of choreography?). While the video reads to me as an aggressive invitation to gazed upon, it’s confrontational. The model/designer/”dancer” gazes back. The viewer can actually meet his eyes (negotiated through the video . . . and I can’t even begin to discuss the politics of presence and absence in the medium of video, not in this post). When he is undressed, it is he who undresses himself, not the viewer undressing him.
I love the drama of the tossed fan, the thrown jacket, the twirl of the long white dress, the coy smiles, the laps when he doesn’t pause to be viewed, but moves towards and away in a single path, almost as if to say, “You can look, but I’m not going to assist you in your looking.”
There. That’s my brief critical dance response to a fashion video.
Oh, and this is a picture of Matt and I at the party after the show. I think we look nice:
Filed under: art, inspiration | Tags: annie sprinkle, elizabeth stephens, kundalini, love art lab, magic, masturbation, performance art, sexuality
As the Love Art Lab has been a huge inspiration for my life/love/art this year (as any dedicated or occasional reader of this blog can easily deduce), I took a little time this afternoon to familiarize myself with a bit more of Annie and Beth’s work. I can’t say that I have an exhaustive awareness of either of their work, history, development as artists/activists/etc., but as I read more, look at more, I am becoming increasingly inspired.
Here are each of their brief bios:
Annie Sprinkle Ph.D. is the prostitute/porn star turned artist/sexologist. She has passionately researched and explored sexuality in all of its glorious and inglorious forms for thirty six years, and has shared her findings all along the way through producing and starring in her own unique brand of sex films, photographic work, teaching workshops, and college lectures. She is also an internationally acclaimed artist who tours theater pieces, and shows visual art, about her life in sex and love.
Annie has long championed sex worker rights and health care. She was one of the pivotal players in the 80’s “sex positive feminist movement”. In 2002 Annie earned her Ph.D. in Human Sexuality, making her the first porn star to get a Ph.D
Her autobiography, Post Porn Modernist is a pioneering cult classic. Hardcore from the Heart: The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance, won the Firecracker Alternative Book Award (2002). Sprinkle’s last book, “Dr. Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex– Makeover Your Love Life” was her first mainstream how-to self-help book.
Currently Sprinkle’s main on going project is The Love Art Laboratory, loveartlab.org, in which she collaborates with her partner Elizabeth Stephens. She also does many college lectures about her work. Her newest DVD, Annie Sprinkle’s Amazing World of Orgasm teaches people lots more about orgasm. Sprinkle is based out of San Francisco and Boulder Creek, California.
Elizabeth M. Stephens is interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator who has explored themes of sexuality, gender, queerness, and feminism through art for over 20 years. Her current passion is SexEcology: the art of exploring the Earth as a lover. This work is designed to create the desire in others to love, cherish and honor the earth as they would their own lover, instead of expecting the earth to take care of them as one might expect from one’s mother. SexEcology combines Stephens’ interest in sexuality and ecology in order to help stop environmental degradation and bring about environmental healing and pleasure. Some of her other works include the bronze sculptural installation, The Academic/Porn Star Panty Collection; the road trip performance piece Wish You Were Here; the video installation, Kiss, as well as her ongoing collaboration with Annie Sprinkle in the Love Art Laboratory. She has exhibited and performed in museums, galleries and festivals around the world.
One piece in particular completely rocked my world today. It is a piece that Annie did entitled “The Legend of the Ancient Sacred Prostitute.” She says that she considers it one of her most important works. It completely conflates live performance art, sacred sexuality, somatic energy work, ritual and magic, masturbation, the public and the private, art and sex work, etc. What may seem very simple seems to me in fact very complex. It ties together so many aspects of my own interests and studies. What I want to share here is Annie’s own writing about this piece (this text is copied from http://www.anniesprinkle.org/html/writings/onstage.html. It was originally published in Annie’s first book, Post Porn Modernist. It, as well as the images below, belong to Annie Sprinkle, just so we’re clear). I’m not sure how this work will strike you. I don’t know if you will find it glorious, provocative, irreverent, irrelevant, or offensive. I find it incredibly thought provoking and inspiring, and as such, I want it to be here as part of my public creative platform. I’m not sure to what degree this work and the ideas it provokes will influence or inspire my work, but it does influence and inspire me. I hope it does the same for you:
“THE LEGEND OF THE ANCIENT SACRED PROSTITUTE
Of all the things I’ve ever done in my life, this “performance” was the most important and enlightening. Here is some text about my infamous masturbation ritual, from my book Post Porn Modernist. I invite and encourage you to try doing this “performance” as well. Let me know how it goes.
THE RITUAL
I put on a costume that was designed from a dress I saw on an ancient granite statue of a Sumerian priestess. It is topless and bottomless. The stage is transformed into an altar, upon which are set gold candles and a copper bowl containing ghee and dried cow dung. With a match I light the cow dung. It burns in a beautiful, inspirational, aphrodisiac flame. To my right is a tray of objects—a loofa sponge, scented massage oil, tiger balm (to stimulate my erogenous zones), several dildos, course salt for psychic protection, items of personal meaning, plus something that ancient sacred prostitutes didn’t have, but luckily we have today: a tireless, strong, battery-operated vibrator. I tell the history of the ancient sacred prostitutes: “Women and sometimes men, from ancient cultures in Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Egypt and Greece, devoted their lives to learning the art of sexual ecstasy. Sex was very different for them than it is for most of us today. In the temples, the main elements of sex were prayer, healing, ritual, and meditation. It was believed that the best time to connect with the Divine, to get visions, and create miracles was when you were in a state of sexual ecstasy.” I cast a circle and make an invocation: “I call upon the spirit of the greatest sex experts and sexual healers that ever lived for their wisdom and guidance.” With each candle I light, I make a prayer, for example: a cure for AIDS, to find a house for rent on the beach for reasonable rent, better health for a friend in the hospital, etc. I invite audience members to make a wish for themselves. The idea is to then go into sexual ecstasy to take the prayers and wishes to the Divine, just as they did in the ancient days.
Theater ushers go down the isles and offer each member of the audience a rattle made from plastic cups with rice and seeds inside them. They are invited to shake their rattles to the hypnotic sounds of Andrew McKenzie’s Hafler Trio. (Andrew made high-tech recordings of the sex sounds of my body, sampled them, and made them into an unusual piece of ‘music’ for the ritual, which are now available on a CD called Masturbatorium.)
Most audience members shake their rattles vigorously, which can create a lot of energy and be very intense. Because I am wearing a wireless headset microphone, my breathing and other sounds are amplified.
I proceed to awaken my body, to create pathways for sexual energy to flow through me by stretching, undulating, shaking, and breathing. I slather myself with scented massage oil, anoint my third eye with my menstrual blood (when available) which helps inspire psychic visions. With the vibrator I stimulate my lips, tongue, the back of my neck, my hara, the base of my spine, my anus and heart. Using deep, conscious, rhythmic breathing, I gather energy from the audience and the universe in general, inhale it up into my pussy, pull it up through my heart, and exhale it out the top of my head, giving it back to the audience and universe, continuously orbiting energy, giving and receiving alternately.
When the time is right, I press the vibrator (on high) to my trusty clitoris, stimulate my Goddess spot (g-spot) with my magic dildo, and gradually lift off into another dimension. I am not in Kansas any more—or at Show World Center doing strip speak. It’s no fantasy. It’s a very real, intense, wild ride, a close encounter of the fourth kind. A bizarre, interactive art/life/sex experiment.
The ritual comes to a climax, lights blackout, and there is silence. Lights and music gently come up. I remove my oily costume, false eyelashes and wig and sit naked on my altar, heart open, nurturing the feelings of the afterglow. Audience members are invited to either leave, or if they want, to stay and hang out.
MY NOTES ABOUT THE RITUAL
As with any kind of sex, or any kind of performance, some days are better than others. Many variables influence the results: the type, shape, size, and feel of the theater, the particular audience, whether the audience is mostly men or women, whether it’s a weekday or weekend, what country I’m in, my head space and health, my technical crew, the moon, the weather, world news, and who knows what else.
The intensity of masturbating on stage in front of hundreds of people brings up a kaleidoscope of feelings that get magnified onstage. Oftentimes, I feel strong, happy, compassionate, and powerful. Sometimes I feel sad, tired, angry, and vulnerable. I’ve discovered that any kind of feelings can co-exist with sexual ecstasy, which is the basis for my approach to sexual healing. Sometimes the experience is not about feelings but about physical sensation, or energy. Often I trance out and travel far; sometimes I feel like dead weight going nowhere. The key is to always try to practice acceptance of what’s there, or not there, and to have no expectations.
So, do I have a REAL orgasm? This seems to be the foremost thing on many people’s minds and what members of the press so often focus upon. (When someone doesn’t like my show, they invariably say I faked an orgasm. And some people just assume that all sex workers fake orgasm.) Why people are so hung up on this point is rather odd and amusing to me. Having an orgasm was never the primary goal of this ritual. The ritual is about learning and teaching, about provoking thoughts and feelings, and about entering a state of ecstasy in order to bring prayers and wishes to the Divine. It is about re-creating the feel of the ancient temples.
I would like to address the orgasm question once and for all. Most of the times I performed the ritual, I experienced one or more types of orgasm; keep in mind that I have a more expanded concept of orgasm than most folks. With the use of the cool crystal dildo, I almost always had a vaginal, cervical, and/or G-spot orgasm (super easy for me). I also usually had some kind of breath or energy orgasm—that’s when a buildup of energy from the deep, rhythmic breathing is released, which feels similar to getting the chills. About half the time, I had a clitoral orgasm, and about one-third of the time I had a clitoral climax. For me these two are noticeably different. I experience clitoral orgasms as smallish orgasms that radiate through the pelvis area; it’s possible to have several or many. I experience clitoral climax as much more intense, starting in the clit, radiating throughout the pelvis, then shooting up through the entire torso and out the top of my head. With a clitoral climax usually comes a throat release of moans or screams. My clitoral orgasms are not as obvious as my clitoral climaxes. On approximately a dozen occasions I had what I call a full-body-mega-kundalinigasm, where ecstasy-electricity streamed throughout my entire body for several minutes. Let me tell you, nothing makes a girl feel more like a real live Goddess than a mega-kundalinigasm.
Sometimes my orgasms were very subtle, and sometimes they were very intense. And sometimes I had no orgasms: at times my battery was empty, I didn’t feel much at all, and those times were an important part of the whole and made the performances all the more interesting and challenging.
My goal in this ritual was to be authentic and be in the truth of the moment, whatever it was. I could see absolutely no point in faking an orgasm, and I never did. (The only time in my life I have ever faked orgasms was in my first few years in porno movies. Back then, I was not very orgasmic. We girls were expected to fake it on cue. Porn directors didn’t think that going for a real orgasm was important or worth taking time for. For that matter, in those days lots of people didn’t even believe women were biologically capable of having orgasms!) I wore a tiny wireless microphone very close to my mouth, so audience members could hear and feel the genuine quality of my orgasms.
I had no role models for public sex magic masturbation rituals. So when I started I didn’t really quite know how to be or what to do. It took a lot of practice and refining, and I made lots of mistakes. Once I tried flogging myself with a cat-o’-nine tails to stimulate my skin, which didn’t really work and must have looked pretty weird. I tried blindfolding myself during the afterglow part so I could stay in my erotic trance, because people would want to talk with me, but I found that it broke my connection with the audience. The camphor I used in the flame bowl to burn the cow dung gave me a horrible cough. My healing ritual was making me sick! (I switched to Duraflame.) Finally, I performed the masturbation ritual for thirty nights in a row in huge theaters of five hundred to nine hundred seats. It took enormous effort to fill those “containers” energetically, and I burned myself out to a crisp. That was the last time I did the ritual, and I’m still recovering!
Over four years, the ritual changed enormously from demonstrative, wild, physical, animalistic, and loud to a more sensuous, subtle, gentle, and quiet performance. There were nights when I felt really beautiful and sexy, and nights when I felt clumsy and silly. After doing it for about two years, I became conscious of the deliciousness of nurturing the afterglow. After the music and energy of the ritual climaxed, the audience had the choice to leave the theater or to stay. Usually about a quarter of the audience would stay. I would fall into a deep, silent meditation and often go deeper into my trance. The atmosphere became incredibly sweet and heartfelt, and this was always my favorite part of the entire show.
Contrary to what most people think, my motivation for masturbating onstage was not to turn people on, to get attention, or to get off on being an exhibitionist. I wish it were that simple. When so many people are witnessing you, it makes every little thing big and clear. I was taking something that’s usually done alone in the dark, putting it under a micro-scope, and shining beautiful theatrical light on it so we could all look at it together. The theater setting became a laboratory in which to experiment; sex became a microcosm for all of life. I learned a lot about how energy works, about how to do ritual (I never had much training), and about trance states.
If I was feeling happy, it seemed like the whole audience was feeling happy. If I was feeling uptight, the audience seemed uptight. I learned about letting go, about attaining visions, and about being authentic and sensitive. I learned a lot about sexuality. It was always my greatest hope that people witnessing the masturbation ritual would get something out of it for themselves. Plus, I believe masturbation is an absolutely wonderful thing, and I wanted to promote it.
Needless to say, this was the part of the show people either loved the most or hated the most. Some people were totally uncomfortable watching me. They became disgusted and even got angry. Some insisted that masturbation should only be done in private. Other people reported they felt love and compassion, received inspiration, had a realization, or had powerful feelings come up. Quite a few even reported having had spontaneous orgasmic experiences. Women’s tears were always the greatest compliment, and there were many. I learned more from doing this masturbation ritual than from anything I have ever done in my life, and I consider it my most important work to date.”
