Thoughts from previous posts
I have been finding it a little difficult to get into the blog recently…I feel detached from it… maybe it isn’t just the blog, but I certainly do feel detached in some sense.
I’ve been reading back through previous posts from earlier in the year, and there are things that have come up that I wanted to pull to the front again, because they interested /interest me, because I felt their trail had been lost amongst more recent postings.
Zaza, I had not read your post way back in response to what I had said about some of the images you had posted….you were saying that domination for you was not ‘putting’ yourself in a position but that you are exploring that side of yourself in a safe environment…in a context of control and play…
I guess what is difficult as a viewer is how to read it without seeing someone putting herself in a position in which they are being dominated. The word bondage alone suggests someone being tied up or constricted or restrained, which does involve control, and therefore it is hard to think and see some f the images without being aware of the connotations that go along with it.
The word offensive came up, (can’t remember where exactly), and it is not that I find the images offensive as such,…I am not offended by them, but yes, I suppose they are threatening…the one with the guy dressed from head to toe in black with his penis out and something in his mouth…this image in particular makes me feel uncomfortable and it is threatening.
I am drawn more to those images where we see only a snapshot of what is going on….I do like the one with the red/pink rope with your hands tied behind you…but I wonder where this sits within your ‘exploring that side of yourself’…is it about the experience itself, or as an artist is it about the images that emerge from that experience? Maybe this is what I have been, or was trying to ask before, but failed to actually get to the point…
The experience of it is the part I am not drawn to, because of how I feel about your being vulnerable, (even if you are not, but that is how I instinctively feel towards it), and the control being in someone’s else’s control, but the images I am interested in….of having one’s hands tied behind one’s back….of walking in high heels along the same line until you fell over….if it is about exploration, would these images still need to be seen in the same context, or can they exist outside of that, without an explanation?
I’ve been reading back through previous posts from earlier in the year, and there are things that have come up that I wanted to pull to the front again, because they interested /interest me, because I felt their trail had been lost amongst more recent postings.
Zaza, I had not read your post way back in response to what I had said about some of the images you had posted….you were saying that domination for you was not ‘putting’ yourself in a position but that you are exploring that side of yourself in a safe environment…in a context of control and play…
I guess what is difficult as a viewer is how to read it without seeing someone putting herself in a position in which they are being dominated. The word bondage alone suggests someone being tied up or constricted or restrained, which does involve control, and therefore it is hard to think and see some f the images without being aware of the connotations that go along with it.
The word offensive came up, (can’t remember where exactly), and it is not that I find the images offensive as such,…I am not offended by them, but yes, I suppose they are threatening…the one with the guy dressed from head to toe in black with his penis out and something in his mouth…this image in particular makes me feel uncomfortable and it is threatening.
I am drawn more to those images where we see only a snapshot of what is going on….I do like the one with the red/pink rope with your hands tied behind you…but I wonder where this sits within your ‘exploring that side of yourself’…is it about the experience itself, or as an artist is it about the images that emerge from that experience? Maybe this is what I have been, or was trying to ask before, but failed to actually get to the point…
The experience of it is the part I am not drawn to, because of how I feel about your being vulnerable, (even if you are not, but that is how I instinctively feel towards it), and the control being in someone’s else’s control, but the images I am interested in….of having one’s hands tied behind one’s back….of walking in high heels along the same line until you fell over….if it is about exploration, would these images still need to be seen in the same context, or can they exist outside of that, without an explanation?
posted by Katherine at 10:05 pm
3 Comments:
I was also reading somewhere near the post the comment Jacob had left, which I actually think I must have missed first time round. It was about self portraiture being difficult to avoid if the artist’s body was so ingrained in the work. I agree with what you said Jacob, about using yourself because that’s what is there, but also along the way do you not think there is a conscious decision not to use someone else….even if only because it would mean directing them to do what you wanted and that changed the process? I think it is difficult to separate the artist from the work when they’re present, (and maybe it becomes more difficult the more you know someone?) Yet, with some artist’s work the context of their work did emerge more so than the fact that it was that particular person…. I can’t think of an example off the top of my head…
For me, I didn’t want to use someone else in my work. It is vital to the work that I use myself….although it is not about ‘using’, but about experiencing…. I do not often make work having planned out what I am going to do. I think it is instinctive and reactive to a space or a situation, so besides from the fact that it would change my practice in the sense that I would need someone very flexible who could come running as and when I needed or wanted them to be somewhere….but also because my experience was what made the work what it is…..i think the work is fed by me, and it is not fed literally or specifically, it is something I am not able to articulate…and I guess that’s why and where the work emerges from…from something I am not so certain of, of something inarticulate, and only afterwards, only when I can gain some distance can I begin to read the work, see it and view it as a visual thing/image.
I’ll finish this in a new post….I don’t want squeeze previous posts off the bottom of the page.
To talk about offensive is interesting to me. I have to say I don't find these images shocking, I see them every day, everywhere I look; not so explicit but watered down marketing versions of the same messages and I'm sick of them, not offended. I suspect Zaza that you intened them to shock and possibly to offend, if so why when there is so much in this world to be offended by? The figure Male/female? holding his penis and a sword in a mask in many ways is a pathetic image, sad and depresing. A last physical, violent attempt at power, its very lonely, but power over someone/anyone is lonely. I find myself crying for George Bush sometimes, even Mr Blair. Look what they have done for power, they must feel wretched to their very core, what a lonely place to exist.
To get back to the penis guy, a friend of mine recently got on a bus and sat down next to a young man. Shortly into her journey she noticed that the boy had his penis out and was holding it in his hand, calmly and still.
How do we interpret this event? was he holding his 'powerful weapon', feeling confident? planning what his next step was after this exposure, where next? like that man I saw walking across camberwell green carrying a machette saying he was going to 'kill the blacks!' or had he absent mindedly taken it out for comfort, day dreaming, forgotten where he was and acted out of habit?
It doesn't really matter to my friend what his situation was because she will never know, how it made her feel is all that she has to deal with. None of it matters really I guess that was just life. I suppose Zaza that my question to you is what do your images bring to us which are different and why?
You may feel that this is not a question which you should have to answer or you simply choose not to and I can appreciate that, maybe this is up to us to work out for ourselves individually but I think it would be interesting to open a dialogue about this if you would like to.
Rachel x
i am certainly not trying to shock or offend i too am interested in the experience and in the images that come form them. this is my personal journey and it is about control and the transcendence of that control it is also about lonliness and sadness and what is beautiful and scarey. my images, and the written images are the more important to me because they are alive as opposed to photos which are dead, come from my experience and my perception of events also my use of language and imagery. that is what makes them different and also that i am exploring the experience of power and submission from a "stylised" position. i am encountering many thoughts in my documentation and interaction with others in the bdsm world of the pointlessness of the human condition known as civilization.
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