Category: Uncategorized

Cao Yu – Fountain [excerpt] (2015)

In physics, there is what’s termed the ‘observer effect’. It suggests that by watching (or, I suppose, more accurately: by attempting to measure certain phenomena) the mere act of watching changes that which is observed).

I was unfamiliar with this performance before @psyche8eros featured it–I am super impressed with it, not just in and of itself but also because of how it plays the varying experiences and perspectives of the viewer against each other, and is sharpened in the process.

Fountain pivots on lactation–a physical process.

I’ve known many folks who have been pregnant. Most of those have experienced some degree of anxiety with regards to the question of whether or not to breast feed.

There’s the questions regarding how the body changes during pregnancy as well as post-partum. Concern over whether one’s body can accommodate breast feeding. As well as the social stigmas associated with breast feeding. (Just think back to the most recent manufactured outrage about a new parent breast feeding their child in public and that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.)

This removes feeding of any progeny from the equation and merely illustrates the physicality of the process. And I’m of the opinion that most of the folks I’ve known with such anxieties, would’ve been reassured if they had been able to watch this.

Thus a pregnant viewer is likely to see this video through a very specific filter.

Is this just made for pregnant folks? Hardly.

I think it’s interesting to consider several conceptual points: yes, it’s about lactation but about lactation less any sort of consuming progeny.

In that way it’s not so unlike heterosexual pornography–where procreation is not procreative but focused instead of documenting the pleasure associated with the process. The lighting, milk-droplet dotted flesh and decontextualization are all borrowed from pornography.

So yes, you can see it as lactophilic in nature. (Although I think to see it as only that requires a certain degree of privilege, since the decontextualization–porn-y or otherwise–makes the proceedings about the body, not in any objective way, but by bearing witness to a mechanical process of the body.)

The coup de grace is how the title ties the depiction of process into the art historical tradition of objects (instead of process) as the purpose of art.

The Malezine – Untitled (2016)

The longest bridge in Iceland, Skeiðarárbrú, was shut down permanently several weeks back.

Built in the mid-to-late 70s, it was the final section of the Ring Road to be completed.

It bridges the Morsá–a river formed from glacial run-off and melt. The flow has ebbed and river is perhaps a generous term–it’s really more of a wide-ish rapidly running stream these days.

Iceland has a reputation as the land of fire and ice due to all the indigenous glaciers and volcanoes. The closing of the bridge stayed with me because the topic was introduced while discussing impermanence.

See: the area between Kirkjubæjarklaustur and Skaftafell will almost certain be completely washed away during the next major eruption of any of the volcanoes in that area.

I think part of why it stuck with me is that I’ve not been in a very good place mental health-wise. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering tumult, upheaval and trauma as endings. But as the saccharin pop sentiment notes (correctly, it should be added): every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

I’m not sure the above is any kind of masterpiece. (I’m typically not all that impressed with photo montage–my beloved Yves Klein, notwithstanding.) But, despite the ubiquity of ejaculation as a signifier of completion in pornography, I’m always felt that it has potential as the subject for fine art work.

In order to achieve that end, however, you have to recontextualize it so that it ceases to represent only an ending.

The above freezes the moment of propulsive ejaculatory force in perpetuity–a volcano forever frozen mid-eruption.

I’ve always said that if I ever shoot a hetero porn scene, I’d want the boy to come within the first minute of the scene–prematurely as it were and then let the scene demonstrate how sex in the real world is about using your words to communicate wants and needs and to negotiate expectations, disappointments, frustrations as well as passions, pleasures and desires.

Source: themalezine

Txema Yeste – Extase featurig Stella Lucia for Numero (2016)

The image above does not really fit the format of this project. I’m including it anyway.

Why? Well, first of all, it’s more or less embedded itself in my subconscious. There’s something both beautiful and sinister about it.

Also, I really don’t care for snakes. To the extent that whenever a photo of a snake slithers across my dashboard, I physically cringe–every damn time.

It’s not an intrinsic or irrational fear–I came about half a second from stepping barefoot into a nest of copperheads when I was a wee one. I remember it very distinctly because of the sudden sharp stop from my father that despite the fact that I normally did not give a fuck what he said his voice left no room for anything except to stop dead in my tracks. I saw it a second later–a big momma copper head ready to strike, her babies relatively oblivious nearby. I was instructed to back away slowly. Took half a step and then was suddenly yanked back several yards.

I also remember connecting that memory with a scene in a PBS educational series where an Indiana Jones type character had to proceed through a tomb and there was a pit of snakes and the viewer was informed that a certain number of the snakes were venomous while the rest were harmless. The idea being that you could calculate the risk of clamoring through the pit if youw ere so inclined.

So snakes are one of the few things where something in the real world has crawled into my dream world. Any dream where I am outside and there are leaves on the ground or visible tree roots, my brain is automatically wary of snakes.

And ring neck garden snakes or corn snakes are great–and I have no qualms handling them. It’s just coming upon a snake unexpectedly always makes me very antsy because I’m not so great at determining if their venomous or not. (Same way that I’d love to forage for mushrooms but there are too many that I just can’t tell the super poisonous ones from the edible ones… so I just don’t mess with it.)

The snake in this image is some sort of boa constrictor or python, I think. But it’s shot in such a way that you don’t immediately know that.

It’s also a narrative image–what the narrative is, is ambiguous; but it is better for such ambiguity. (Also, there’s not many interpretations that aren’t somewhat surreally unhinged.)

As much as I don’t care for vertical oriented images, this is an example of an image that would only work as a skinny frame.

Source: photographicpictures