Focusing on time & space, spectator & spectacle, this first film was definitely a rough idea to keep focus on.  The sound was obnoxiously violent, whereas the film reel tripping acted as a strobe light somewhat under control.  I attempted to just watch the film with my eyes and then only my ears, but the film itself was so drastic and immature, it reminded me of Clockwork Orange, and this was how you’d drive a person crazy!  From an artistic point, Joan’s idea was her body stuck in a “box” and as the film progressed different angles and shots/activities of her body would appear repeatedly, which created an echo effect in which the sound seemed to illuminate.  Each take also seemed to establish new eye levels of focus; you were never looking in the same spot twice.  Towards the end her head entered the screen but was outside the “box.”

Female Sensibility
1973 / 14 min / color / sound
Director: Lynda Benglis

With this film, certain attributes where the ideas that kept my attention.  The radio overcast seemed more like white noise, it didn’t actually have to be there, and this film was more about the two characters caressing the other.  Special attention was paid to their hands and face, definitely emotion and senses were a major role in this film.  The telecast seemed to be just random jabber but it separated our cast from public to private life.  Depending on certain angle shots on the other hand created some gender confusion in which you couldn’t tell if two were male or female, but it didn’t matter, you watched the two people be together which almost brought you along with them.  Some major factors were defiantly lighting, it was a very bright white light and their lipstick and hair were very contrasting colors which allowed you to associate them with their character as a way of keeping track.

Through the Large Glass
1976 / 10 min / color / silent / 16 mm film
Director: Hannah Wilke

This particular film might have been my favorite out of the five, just because it was silent and had only female acting.  Three different takes of a woman stripping in front of a mirror, the way scene was set up gave you the illusion of you standing off in the distance watching a woman in which maybe you shouldn’t be starring at, but you find yourself not looking away and it seems that the woman has no idea she’s being watched.  As she undresses, it’s very slow and melodic, but strategic poses mixed with sly/seductive facial expressions.  The woman strips down to nothing but a cowboy hat, but the interesting part is that you can’t see her full naked body, she’s blocked by certain objects that seemed to have been placed in front of her purposefully.

The East Is Red, The West Is Bending
1977 / 20 min / color / sound
Director: Martha Rosler

This was another great one in which I enjoyed a lot!  It’s all about the Wok and its amazing how much the West likes to complicate objects it comes into contact with despite its simplicity seen from the East’s point of view.  Its comedic features were astounding in its basic educational purpose.  A lesson in which allows a person to replicate a practice/tradition of another in a more high tech way. 

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman
1978-79 / 6 min / color / sound
Director: Dara Birnbaum

“I am Wonder Woman!”  Oh Linda Carter!  All she had to do is spin around one time-explosion-Bam!  She’s Wonder Woman!  From regular female to super hero all in a twirl, her body never changes, just her uniform.  The song was ridiculous, with lines like, “get us out from under…Wonder Woman, and Shake thy Wonder Maker.”  Dara’s explanation is “Real becomes Wonder in order to "do good" (be moral) in an (a) or (im) moral society.”  Running, spinning and saving man in a repetitious cycle, while looking fantastic doing it!  Real over character was defiantly an issue, I saw Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, instead of Wonder Woman as Linda Carter, which I think would make my perception of this film change in way that might have been easier to understand what exactly Dara was trying to do!

Man makes machine

Man runs machine

Man makes village

Man runs village

Those in disagreement

Are sent under

Never to be heard from again

Separate parties

Same basic idea

One is right

And one is wrong

But who is to say

A woman

She is our creator

As well as our diminish

Revolt, revolution, war

Now is the time

You mustn’t wait

Go now

Take back what is yours

March like militia

Claim your victory

Past and future collide

Fight for the better

One man’s praise

Is another’s curse

Club of Sons, Eternal Gardens, myth of Olympus

All characteristics of the world

Saved from the head

By the reach of a hand

Mediated by the heart

Community is a gift

For the whole society

What!  I feel bright today!

My wheels are turning, my wheels are turning, time is ticking, time is ticking, faster faster faster faster GO!

My hair’s perfect today, beautiful symmetrical, highlighted by my brain.

Tis the light of day.

Gotta go gotta go gotta go right now!

Has anyone seen my keys?

Mademoiselle, your car awaits you!

Thank you dearest Edna, I’m off for a gallivant.

Who is this man, pushing my wheel?  Hmph I don’t need him, this pedestal shall keep me afloat.

I stalk her from a distance, my eyes black, full of envy.  She has it all.  The hair, the legs, the body and the brain, who could ask for more?

A light bulb, full of energy, my mind always spinning, like electricity running through the wires of a vacant house, someone’s watching me!  I can feel the sense of thrill they receive from watching me at a distance. 

Can’t stop can’t stop addicted to this shindig!

My car a sign of wealth

My hair a sign of beauty

My legs a sign of seduction

My mind is as bright and as sharp as an old pocket watch.

I feel as though I’m slowing down.

Withering into nothing as my gears cake in rust.

What is this rush?

The gold as luminous as the past

Oh history, a sign of the times.

Time stands still as you free fall from nothing.

I lay in this position next to my product of desire.

Everything’s stopped.

Fashioning the Body

Concept Rythming Paper #2

I am a born female changed male, straight turned gay was hetero now homo but flexible because I am Trans.  Trans what, transsexual, transgender, transman, transwomen, what if I am just a person?  The label in which you submit yourself too is as much apart of you as you are of it.  Scott Turner Schofield’s performance of “Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps,” provides the opportunity for Scott to entertain and inform his audience that he is not the first, nor the last of his kind, but a link in history that sparks thought worthy of discussion.  It is Epic Theatre in Brechtian theology.

The room goes dark as the stage lights come up.  The narration cues the video of a baby fetus, solemn in a womb with the beating of a single heart.  Overhead a protective yet caring acquaintance informs our sense of imagination that this is a safe environment.  Dressed in gray pajamas, ready to settle down for bed, in time for a story, Scott intrigues the idea of building a “fort” with an open invitation.  Enclosed by three drapes appearing overhead, we have stepped forward to allow for this illumination to capture our senses.  Settling his props, the audience shifts one last time as Scott reads us his rules for the game, silently in agreement, numbers begin to fly in hopes of a little satire.  127 stories allowing for the intimacy level to rise between Scott and his peers as these personal tales awaken our senses and begin to provoke our emotions.

He looks dresses and sounds like a man.  He has a masculine name, he’s prone to letting the dirty dishes stack up, he uses the men’s room, and he goes by “he” but what keeps Turner back as a male is the “F” on his driver’s license.  Before Scott made the transition, his given name at birth was Katie.  Around the age of sixteen, Katie announced to her peers that she was a lesbian and was nearly homecoming queen at her high school, in addition to some softer detail, while Katie was in college she went by “KT” instead to help with her identity.  Over the last decade, Scott has written two other plays, Underground Transit and Debutante Balls.  He has also worked as a head counselor at La Vida Del Corazon which is an arts oriented camp in Costa Rica.  Scotts role was to teach self confidence, integrity and believing in oneself.  Being true to oneself is much more important then conforming to anyone else’s idea of how a certain gender should pass, it’s not a deception as much as it is a front.  “I don’t feel my body is wrong.” (Scott)

The chin-up head nod, to shave or buy tampons, boyish-lesbians (gateway drug?), ultra-feminine women, more of a dude (a sign of masculinity), “what’s up buddy,”  all children change as they grow older, but “becoming a man is less about equipment and more about attitude after the hormonal factor.” (Scott)  “The individual borrows the series of movements which constitute it from the action executed in front of him or with him by others.” (Mauss)  Turner shares with his audience that after he began taking Testosterone, his ladylike hourglass figure transformed into a males “V” with more body hair, more confidence and his voice dropped an octave, which for if some reason Scott wanted to go back, it is an alright voice for a female.  It feels like going through puberty from a teenage boy’s perspective, kind of like a lava lamp.  Scott also announces that he has no interest or financial means of taking his physical refinements any further; he is comfortable where he is at now.  Throughout his performance, Scott confesses that he is seen as one of the guys but is still questioned as a female; he is masculinity without its phallus.

According to Brecht a theatrical performance in order to be considered “Epic” it must entail:

1. Narrative
2. Arouses his capacity for action
3. Picture of the world
4. He is made to face something
5. The spectator stands outside, studies
6. The human being is the object of the inquiry
7. He is alterable and able to alter
8. Each scene for itself
9. In curves
10. Jumps
11. Man as a process
12. Social being determines thought
13. Reason

Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps could be taken as Dramatic Theatre but because of ifs location, audience and purpose for its educational value it fits directly into Brecht’s theory of Epic Theatre.  Scott provides himself as our subject matter and the ultimate rule of the game is the wheel which stands behind him, broken up into sections by words and numbers.  As each number is shouted from an accumulative crowd, the focus of conversation is changed to a different element of Turner’s experience.  “In every society, everyone knows and has to know and learn what he has to do in all conditions.” (Mauss)  According to Marcel tradition and technique are sacrificial to history, pre-prepared movements dominate the conscious and unconscious and it is through education where these ideas are grasped.  Every technique has its own form and it may be habitual less for the individual but more so for society.  Scott introduced a massive display of labels in his workshop for our program.  Words like Dike, Queer, Femmie, Bi, Metro, Straight, and not to mention the other alphabetically challenged slang to label those who are not like “us.”  People are not words, we are beings, souls, characters, humans, no matter what our sex, gender, or sexuality is.  In dramatic theatre great art is the most obvious thing in the world whereas in epic theatre great art has nothing obvious in it, it is cause and effect, the ability to be so and the option to be different.  Scott provides the anecdote that questions the reasons behind our own personal theories.

“His art makes people feel challenged but also invited…boy do people feel free to open up after his shows.” (Vinnie Murphy)  Scott Turner Schofield defies authority by talking about ideas that are not a part of every day discussion and in that regard his reasons for helping us question the politics of life related to the fashioning of bodies is undoubtedly an extraordinary sacrifice.  Which creates a glitch in society of those who know and understand, and those who do not know and refuse to learn? Besides, what difference does it really make how you orient yourself?  Commonality is not part of our individualistic manner.  In our society humans are suppose to be unique to their own character, not taking into consideration topics like: sex, gender, sexuality, race, economics, politics and the power discourse.  Brecht wanted art to produce social change and at the same time be visually stimulating, to entertain and inform.  Knowledge is nothing without mimesis and Scott Turner Schofield accomplishes this feat in his performance of Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps.

So…?

Yeah…

…Haha

This is ridiculous, wait, how do you spell ridiculous?

If we knew how to spell it, that would be performativity.

R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S

Check out the big brain on CERISE!

Spelling Bee Champion!

Sweet.

Dude…

Sweet Dude!

Yeah man.

Aw Dude!

Shit Yeah!

Haha Fuck Dude!

Oh Dude!

Dude, no.

Haha I said aw dude twice.

Hahaha

Hahaha

Sweet.

Yeah sweet man.

Dude, you can’t say that, I just did!

Pfft, says you!

NO, so says your mom!

WHAT!

You heard what I said.

OoOoo Burn!

Dude, you’re so lame!

Shut up!

Fine, fuck…whatever.

Dude, I feel like I’m having a conversation with myself.

Um, that’s because you are!

What, really?  Wow, that’s like split-personality.

YES!

ShaZam!

Wait, who said ShaZam?

Was it ShaShaq?

Oh yeah, I think it was.

So in all seriousness, do we have a definition for Perfomativity?

I have quotations!

Uh, I think we need more then that!

WE NEED DEFINITIONS!

Dude, they’re talking about Chuck Norris.

Fucking Chuck Norris!

Who’s Chuck Norris?

Performativity Guys!

Oh yeah, right.  Durr!

Chuck Norris has performativity.

Sick dude!

Ok, WOW!

So, performativity is the ongoing project for transforming the way we may define-and-break-boundaries of identity through a repetitious cycle of speech act and language!

The Exit Sign was born January 17, 1946 to a man by the name of Harold Johnson.  Exit spent most of his childhood, somewhat behind the crowd, quiet, but spoke when he needed too.  The Exit sign graduated from Lipinski High and went off to do some great things.  Many of his works can be seen in doorways, ranging from classrooms, shops, planes and his greatest achievement aboard Apollo 13.  In his later life he became a bit more secluded, solemnly standing adrift, addressing to the masses, their escape route.  The Exit Sign is survived by his wife, Enter, who occasionally would stand next to her beloved husband on certain occasions.  His 233 family members, including sons, daughters, and a vast array of grandsigns will hold a public memorial Saturday at noon, to be held at Pier 51 in Seattle.  There will be a private function held for family members and close friends there after at an undisclosed location, where later, the Exit Sign will be tossed aside as his wishes permitted.  On the behalf of the entire Sign family, they want to thank everyone for their thoughts and the use of their directional instruction.  The Exit sign passed on Tuesday from an existing electrical condition, he’ll sorely be missed.

When it comes to the writings of Foucault, his numerous use of the same word is not to confuse his audience but to orient them in way that he can use this lone word to emphasize the multiplicity of it’s meaning in the English language.  His use of the word “knowledge” is just one example allowing us to subscribe to the many discourses throughout his first volume of: The History of Sexuality, an Introduction.  Knowledge is said to be a general awareness or possession of information, facts, ideas, truths, or principles learned throughout time or familiarities/understandings gained through experience/study.  Foucault’s use of knowledge is to allocate other such terms like awareness, consciousness, enlightenment, education, science, familiarity and even carnal to promote further exploration for the discourses in which he questions.

Knowledge creates power, education provides for the opportunity for knowledge, but sex is still controversial.  According to Foucault, “what sustains our eagerness to speak of sex in terms of repression is doubtless, this opportunity to speak out against the powers that be, to utter truths and promise bliss, to link together enlightenment, liberation, and manifold pleasures; to pronounce a discourse that combines fervor of knowledge, the determination to change the laws and the longing for the garden of earthly delights.”(Pg. 7)  Meaning, we crave this fantastic illusion of pleasure and satisfaction in private but how we activate it publicly has a negative discretion allowing for the fall of our own sexuality.  To say “sex is free,” holds regulations on society, being it economically, physically, and even mentally.  “On the face of it at least, our civilization possesses no ars erotica.  In return, it is undoubtedly the only civilization to practice a scientia sexualis; or rather, the only civilization to have developed over the centuries procedures for telling the truth of sex which are geared to a form of knowledge-power strictly opposed to the art of initiations and the masterful secret: I have in mind the confession.” (Pg. 58)  The confession promotes the idea of always having to tell someone else of an act worth being judge by an outside party.  The acknowledgement of a certain scenario promotes power over an individual victim.  Ars Erotica is kept in secret; it beholds passion, obsession, desire and an element of fantasy, western civilization does not believe in this, sex must be learned, acknowledged, kept track of and in some circumstances frowned upon.  What Foucault is trying to teach us, is that our knowledge of sex and sexuality should be embraced; it owns us as much as we claim it, our own personally binary creating us as individuals.

Foucault strongly believes that both adults and children have sex.  Figuratively and physically, a child becomes aware of sexuality at a young age, and as the knowledge about sex is obtained therefore allows for them to participate in this discourse at an older age.  Foucault provides an example of this when, “speaking about children’s sex including educators, physicians, administrators, and parents to speak of it, or speaking to them about it, causing the children themselves to talk about it, and enclosing them in a web of discourses which sometimes address them, sometimes speak about them, or impose canonical bits of knowledge on them or use them as a basis for constructing a science that is beyond their grasp-all this together enables us to link an intensification of the interventions of power to a multiplication of discourse.” (Pg.30)  Proving that once something is learned, it can be practiced.  Disagreements in cultural aspects are created in the pursuit over knowledge which in lies falsifications, difficulties and assumptions that are not always apparent.  Foucault describes it best in one example as, “underlying the difference between` the physiology of reproduction and the medical theories of sexuality, we would have to see something other and something more then an uneven scientific development of a disparity in the forms of knowledge which has sustained the establishment of scientific discourse in the West, where as the other would derive from a stubborn will to nonknowledge.” (Pg. 55)  His use of knowledge clearly states as an informative tool with recognition for those who know, who are to know, and those who refuse to know.

“In the erotic art, truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a practice and accumulate as experience; pleasure is not considered in relation to an absolute law of the permitted and the forbidden, nor by reference to a criterion of utility, but first and foremost in relation to itself; it is experienced as pleasure, evaluated in terms of its intensity, its specific quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul.  Moreover this knowledge must be deflected back into the sexual practice itself, in order to shape it as though from within and amplify its effects.  In this way, there is formed a knowledge that must remain secret, not because of an element of infamy that might attach to its object, but because of the need to hold it in the greatest reserve, since, according to tradition, it would lose its effectiveness and its virtues by being divulged.” (Pg. 57)  A perfect example into the realm of ars erotica, an act as sensually stimulating as sexuality or sex itself, kept in secret, forbidden for outsider to become aware of their actions, makes the routine that much more orgasmic.  To confess an action such as this allows for judgment and ridicule from a power we inlay in a person of trust in thus ruining the eroticism of a well kept secret.  Knowledge in this instance is on a need to know basis, if shared with society it looses its power discourse and becomes way too familiar for the individual to enjoy or partake in. 

Foucault holds true to the discourses he’s made throughout part three of the book, he leaves it in a way that provides a positive inspiration towards change and a new way of thinking, if we want to.  “The postulate I started out with, and would like to hold to as long as possible, is that these deployments of power and knowledge, of truth and pleasures, so unlike those of repression, are not necessarily secondary and derivative; and further, that repression is not in any case fundamental and overriding.  We need to take these mechanisms seriously, therefore, and reverse the defection of our analysis: rather then assuming a generally acknowledged repression, and an ignorance measured against what we are suppose to know, we must begin with these positive mechanisms, insofar as they produce knowledge, multiply discourse, induce pleasure, and generate power; we must investigate the conditions of their emergence and operation, and try to discover how the related facts of interdiction or concealment are distributed with respect to them.  In short, we must define the strategies of power that are immanent in this well to knowledge.  As far as sexuality is concerned, we shall attempt to constitute the “political economy” of a will to knowledge.” (Pg. 73)  Foucault uses these discourses as tactics; he wants us to think further then we think for ourselves, only to imagine things might be different then how we first perceive them.  If we can find the root of a discourse and look beyond its appeal, we can change its root of power in thus destroying our own institutions of embedded discourses.  “It is not when the truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

The Balcony takes form of a simple three step stage in the mystical shape of a trapezoid.  In the rear consisting between two openings in the wall covered by a lengthy red cloth, a mirror sectioned off creating its own 180 degree visual for our center of attention.  Two vertical bars creating the front of this platform and just below our visual enhancement a horizontal bar creating an illusion of flexibility.  Our object of desire for the evening is young, supple, not out of the ordinary, smooth, and round in only ways that seem to enhance the beauty of this form.  She is distant in practice but her movement is rhythmic.  Her strategy seems to create her own individualistic manner but on repeat, for a “V” no matter how faced, is a reminder that formality is never new.  The sights and sounds are creating the illusion of dualism; it’s just you and I in the room.  Flashes of blue, purple, red and white stream from overhead enhancing the soulful, unique, unspoken word of seduction, innocence and the desire that intellectually stimulates our imagination to lust after the view presented for us as an act, or play.  The noise that invokes foot-tapping links her movement to the voice of another quietly disbursed through her lips as her body sways back and forth as if to do the “la la dance,” an erotic hypnosis on her audience.  Swarming an array of dress from top to bottom, she is “a woman, rather young, highly made up and wearing a lace dressing gown.” (pg.7)  Not quite, try again.  Is she, “a woman, young and beautiful, chained, with her wrists bound for her muslin dress is torn, and her breasts are visible and perhaps, standing in front of her is the executioner?” (pg. 13&14)  Her uniform a tease to later reveal a skin in which we all share but for her, this society will be her last until the new form a day, she owes her body to the man who sits below her heel but her mind is hers for the sake of sanity and the nightly game which consumes her lifestyle.  Suddenly a shift to a darker side, her movements become more violent and less traditional.  Her domination seeps from the soles of her boots.  She is in charge, and with a quick glance through the glass, she sees him, for she is, “near him, looking very indifferent, a very beautiful red-haired girl.  Leather corset, leather boots.  Naked with beautiful thighs.  A Fur jacket, she is waiting. So is the man.  He is impatient, and nervous.  The girl is motionless. (pg. 28)  The man toys with this element of fantasy by baiting this young apprentice for her reward.  She takes it like an animal even though her instinct may say otherwise.  That is what she is here to do, to appease those who lack the power of knowledge, for she is not the dog as he is the rodent caught in a chase.  As this dramatic series of interactions play to an end, this stage is now, “a public square, with patches of shadow.  In the background, at some distance, we perceive the façade of the Grand Balcony, the blinds of which are drawn.” (pg. 55)  The exit is that of sweet release as we find ourselves back in reality.  The gentleman’s club is that of his own atmosphere.

P/S I have all sorts of notes, so if anyones really curious about the club, don't hesitate to ask, I can scan and post those too!

This should only take a few minutes.

Well that’s good.

Ok, first things first, name?

Joe Hansen.

Oh Mr. Joe Hansen.  How old are you Mr. Joe Hansen?

I’m 36, why?

It’s only a question.

Whatever just make it quick!

So Joe, you got a wife?  Huh, maybe some hooligans?

Yeah, I guess her name’s Susan Beam, no kids though.

No kids!  Well that makes this easier.

Does it?

Alright wise guy, where do you reside?

22 Shockingly Lame Blvd.

What kind of housing, stick build, a mobile and how much acreage?

It’s a decent one level stick build on two acres.

And the Utilities?

Everything’s electric plus an additional woodstove.

Occupation?

I’m an engineer.

Well that must pay very well for you dainty lifestyle.

What did you say?

Never mind.  What about your income?

Roughly 86 Grand a year.

Perfect.  What do you use for transportation?

To work or in private?

Is there a difference?

Well I carpool to work and drive an 86’ Buick.

A Buick?

Yeah, that’s right!

Whatever you say Mr. Hansen.

Are we almost finished here, it’s getting late.

Do you have other plans?

Are you changing the subject?

No…No…ok, so we’ve covered name, housing, occupation, transport and marital status.  All I need now is age, ethnicity, language, birth date and any other information from you that’ll complete this form.

This is pretty invasive don’t you think and besides that, I never got your name!

Oh Joe, it’s just so we can keep track of every little aspect that relates to you, and for the record, you don’t need to know my name.