Been a bit quiet over the weekend working, training etc. First day back in the space today got a little achieved not an awful amount but enough.
I’m beginning to wonder whether the video will detract from the final ‘feel’ of my exhibit. I’m going to record sound and video when I smash the penises but am still undecided as to whether they’re an essential part.
I have been playing around with the positioning of one of the pink girls. I put her on a mattress with a sheet on it and liked the way it looked. I need to get a proper bottom sheet and pillow but I think, overall it works.
I’ve been painting the top of the door white as it was black and bugging me its proving difficult to cover but I think that with a few more coats it will look good.
Bought some dustsheets for the floor but they will be the last thing to go down as they will get marked. As well as adding to the surgical look of the room they’ll be functional, as they will contain the smashed pieces of penis.
Bought some Perspex sheet to create 3 shelves for the pigment to sit on also I hope to get these affixed to the wall tomorrow.
I have decided on names for the four chair sculptures they will all be called ‘her’ and number 1 through 4. I thought that this would add to the overall misogyny that I’m heavily playing on in this exhibit.
So this evening I painted the ceiling to my room and above the door I gave that its first coat, as it was black and annoying me. The floor has been cleaned but it isn’t spotless so ill look into what I can lay on top of it that wont mark easily and that isn’t too see-through.
Overall I’m pleased with the presentation of the room so far. It needs a few more touch ups, a floor covering and the cupboard adjusting to accommodate a screen.
When I put all of my work into the room I was worried that it didn’t look enough. However I then thought about it, it’s all condensed in one area and unfinished and for me it’s more about the content as opposed to the quantity. I want it to interact with and cause a reaction from the viewer.
I’m getting excited about the imminent end now.
Following on from the post about James bond id like to link in the gaze. The gaze as a concept and narrative in art has always interested me. With regards to James bond in cinema he holds the typical male gaze within film. In a James bond film whenever an attractive female is on the screen she is panned from toe to head slowly as if the male is observing her. This is the typical male reaction when looking at a female.
Freud in his three essays on the theory of sexuality called this Scopophilla as with this gaze, you are taking the person as an object and subjecting them to a controlling curious gaze. In essence possessing them.
The extreme end of Scopophilla is a perversion making peeping toms whose only sexual gratification comes from watching.
I feel that my work has essences of the gaze within it. These crushed phallus around these animalistic women in one hand offer up men lured and trapped by man eating women. Or those trapped through they’re own search for sexual gratification and hedonism and then those who looked and sought to possess these women. This possession has backfired and they are then possessed and emasculated themselves.
Laura Mulvey from Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.
I watched Casino Royale (James Bond) last night and while like most men I was wincing through the torture scene, it suddenly occurred to me that this torture was like my work.
Little bit of background for those who haven’t watched, le Chiffre is an investment banker for the world’s criminals. He loses all of their money on a stock fix that goes wrong. To recoup this he stages a poker match at Casino Royale in Montenegro. The winner of the match has to put his password into a suitcase that then transfers the winnings to their account. Bond wins this despite various sabotages. Le Chiffre steals bonds women, causes him to crash his car, and takes him from the wreckage to a warehouse.
The bottom of a chair is cut out and bond is strapped to it and systematically beaten in the testicles with a knotted rope by the villain Le Chiffre. During this torture scene Le Chiffre says – “And of course, it’s not only the immediate agony, but the knowledge… that if you do not yield soon enough… there will be little left to identify you as a man.”
I thought this was interesting it seems that the emasculation of bond is important. Bond being the epitome of masculinity with a string of women this seems to be how Le Chiffre is trying to get him to give up the password.
With regards to my work Le Chiffre has taken the place of the vice. However the same basic principle is there he is taking away bonds masculinity and the film through Le Chiffre suggests heavily that without the means to reproduce man isn’t a man.
In my work taking the whole phallus emasculates you. Is it just the reproductive organs that define you as a man? Does taking these make you some kind of non-man? What about those that loose there’s to cancer? Are they less of a man than a man with his intact?
Lastly, the feeling that many get watching this scene is the feeling I hope my sculptures will stir.
Casino Royale torture scene.
