New Project: Exchange

I've been working on this collaborative performance-for-the-lens project since January.  It continues my exploration of lipstick as a transferable medium that can connote gender, sexuality, power, etc.  For this project, I was interested in how those concepts play out within the context of a romantic relationship.  My partner and I each took a turn as the wearer of the lipstick/ initiator of the action.  For each round, we would kiss until no more lipstick could be exchanged, stopping to capture an image of the progress in between re-applications.  We repeated this process until the surfaces of both of our faces were as covered in lipstick as they seemed like they were going to get. 

This relationship is still relatively new to me, and has brought up a lot of ideas for me concerning my own sexuality and gender expression (I am a queer-identified gender-nonconforming woman; Nick is a straight cis man).  Performing this piece collaboratively speaks directly to the process of mutual transformation I have experienced in this process of getting to know and falling in love with someone while navigating these complexities. 

Much of my work deals with thoughts surrounding identity--the idea of our surface/ performed identity in relation to our inner/ personal identity; how both are in perpetual flux, informing each other, shaped within the context of broader external forces and systems.  My drawing process lately has involved directly drawing the configurations of shapes and lines that I see in the surface grain of the paper I'm working on, then tearing and reconfiguring that surface.  In looking at past projects like Putting My Face On and Kissing the Boundary, I've realized that my gestures tend to take on this process of accumulated mark on the surface until the original surface is completely obliterated/ transformed into something unrecognizable.  I like the fact that this can either take on a sinister tone or a triumphant one.  Change is difficult, and it is hard to know in the moment whether the struggle is ultimately for the better or the worse.  It is hard to know if you are losing aspects of yourself or discovering potentials heretofore unknown.  I want to speak to both--to the hope and the fear, but mostly to the overarching ambiguous mess of transition--the mess of trying to figure yourself out while simultaneously communicating to and with someone else, of learning and transforming together.  My takeaway so far is that making oneself vulnerable to someone else is always terrifying, but it can be beautiful too, especially when the exchange is mutual.  Anyway, here are the resulting images (more curated view available on the website):

Set One, Me:

Set One, Nick:

Set Two, Nick:

Set Two, Me:

 Composite, Set One:

Composite, Set Two:

Composites Combined:

mənipyəlātəd melədēz (an Aurally Inclined Anagram Offshoot)

mənipyəlāt^əd melədēz is something I started back in March that involved breaking a song lyric down into the phonetic sounds of the words, and then making new, phonetic phrases.  I wrote out the phrases with the phonetic/ grammatical symbols and also recorded myself speaking the phonetic sounds out loud.  I was really into the resulting weird, mechanical vocals, which carry the anagram theme of reducing the phrase down to its most elemental level and re-constructing from that point.

So, I recorded this video, wherein I rearrange scrabble-looking tiles upon which I've written the phonetic symbols used in the lyric "Why is everything a chore?/ I'm too young to be defeated" from Surfer Blood's "Twin Peaks" into new, corresponding phrases, vocalizing the sounds as I go.

VIDEO: 

Flashback to February 2012: Anagram- and Marked- Relevant Drawings!

Right now, I'm in the process of turning my mom's attic into a space where I can work.  Today, while I was moving things around and going through stuff, I came upon this series of drawings that I did before I made the Marked photos.

For some of them, I taped the original dating manual images, which I'd kissed, onto sketch book pages.  But I also used words from my dream archive to make phrases that kind of corresponded to that imagery (the palette was influenced by the imagery as well).  I wrote out certain dreams (in marker, pen, or pencil, on black, white, or brown paper), tore up the words, then taped the words in their new configurations onto the background paper (black photo backdrop paper stretched over pieces of cardboard, tracing paper stained with red acrylic, glued onto pieces of cardboard, white sketchbook pages). 

I presented them in class like this:

The comment that most stood out was someone likening the aesthetic to ransom notes (which I liked).

Here they all are, in no particular order:

DON'T SIT IN AWKWARD POSITIONS--and never look bored, even if you are.  Be alert, and if you must chew gum (not advised), do it silently, mouth closed

 none who had appeared ready were

 should I go/ obviously/ go Finish being

 His eyes/ manipulating still/ despite reluctant hands

 smiling disgust/ she sips her own drink

 again Is staring/ truth Follows her/ Finally Enters deep

 it rolls over You Quickly/ I Continue to help silently

 "So have it"/ it was in her mouth

 she wants more

 somehow/ you see now/ and I feel good

 just admit it/ drift

 DON'T BE FAMILIAR with the headwaiter talking about the fun you had with someone else another time.  Men deserve, desire your entire attention

 sorry! fucking her is profoundly better

 pressing pathetically/ crying involuntarily/ face twisted in/ between

 nodding at the swirls of weirdness

 a moment of pretending to shake/ From blood or expression

 should I still fuck him/ he considers me sadly/ attempting to believe/ resist the urge/ go do Nothing instead

 guess what/ teeth/ eager gesture

 his supposed planning folds/ punching urgently

 in Gazing scenarios/ we/ loses to/ him against her/ They stared at them/ a plastic attention don't/ of wonders

 You have people/ I'm resignedly disappointed

 "Do you want me/ what a question/ no/ just no

 CARELESS WOMEN never appeal to gentlemen.  Don't talk while dancing, for when a man dances he wants to dance Page 30

 their dream fell to me/ I kept working

 my notion of you included the idea of us

 the observer looked on/ examining/ trying to understand

 capable of jealousy and panic

 at least broken/ you wanted to fix me

 next stop/ progress

let go of my sense of me

 respect the strength and power behind my position

 forget about his gaze/ we all gaze together

 trying to get disoriented listening to wet little phrases

 to think of me As a delicate tender vulnerable young thing Is to be wrong

 I whispered intensely/ my sheer ferocity ignored once noticed

 evil objects/ too crazy and confused to attract us

 system crash

 intruder with his urgent because

ourselves within we

he hated himself/ so I loved him.

I drove away the one I coveted.

 I wasn't really thinking too hard about what I was doing when I made these, but what feels significant about them now, in relation to the Anagram things is the fact that I was technically using my own words, rather than someone else's, as the starting point for the phrases.  Granted, they were words taken out of context and reconfigured into a new context.  I've been feeling a little insecure about the possibility that starting with a pre-created phrase might be some kind of crutch.  But I guess it doesn't have to be...I mean, I am turning someone else's words into my own words, and the whole deconstructing/ rebuilding process is a large part of what the Anagram things are about right now anyway.  I guess mainly what's important/ what made me want to post these is the fact that this interest in words isn't actually so new, and these phrases that I made months ago have a similar voice behind them, which is...good, I think?  I suppose only time will tell...