Connecting Issues Bodies in Question

STEPHEN ZEPKE

Spinoza has supplied us with one of the most profound theories of the body. He argues that what a body is, is defined by what a body does. What a body can do is governed by the nature and limits of its power of being affected. This power is formed in each individual through its relations to other bodies, relations that compose and decompose us: we experience joy when another body enters composition with ours, and sadness when another body decomposes ours. Consequently, it is our ethical imperative to pursue those connections which bring us joy and increase our power, to constantly push what our body can do. The Bodies in Question symposium, hosted by the University of Auckland's Art History Department, convened by Hugh McGuire, Elizabeth Eastmond, Wendy Vaigro, and Christopher Braddock, was a body of joyful meetings and exchanges, increasing our knowledge and power.

Bodies in Question, a Symposium Addressing the Body in Aotearoa/ New Zealand Culture: Representations/Uses/Politics, held at the University of Auckland 23-26November1995 Fleshly Worn, an exhibition co-ordinated by Christopher Braddock, held at the ASA Gallery, Auckland, 24 November - 14 December, 1995

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I offer this thought from Spinoza partly as retort to those who charged the symposium's theme was dated or had somehow been done before. These sniping bodies, so boring and repetitive, offer a simple transcendent argument which condemns from above, refusing to engage, and judging from a pregiven law of fashion. I hear them only as voices of resentment, as sad and tired failures to think and have an unique and exciting experience of 'Bodies'.

The scale of Bodies in Question was large, 76 papers were presented, and so obviously I was only able to get to a small fraction. The first paper I took in was the keynote speech by Ted Gott, the curator of European Art at the Australian National Gallery (and my experience of this paper was tempered by the very reason it was the first I got to; I was preparing my own paper to be delivered later in the day). So a certain nervousness animated my body, adding an appropriate edge to a paper already concerned with practices and representations taking place on the 'margins' of society. At least so it seemed in the Auckland City Art Gallery auditorium, in a climate where entry to exhibitions is restricted, and art is given the air of pornography by being presented as a 'peep show'. Gott's paper, entitled Sex and the Single T-Cell: The Taboo of HIV-Positive Sexuality in Australian Art and Culture was a wide and searching consideration of Australian art concerning HIV I AIDS, most specifically various HIV-positive publicity campaigns, their political fall out, and the representational strategies they employ.

Gott' s paper moved from a personal celebration of fuck-bars and HIV-positive friends, to adept criticism of public health strategies. It offered much in the way of both information and analysis, always refusing to slip into pathos or tragedy in response to the AIDS epidemic, instead celebrating the love and joy evident in the HIV-positive community.

Two aspects of Gott' s address stood out for me. First was his astute analysis of the semiotics of Australian safe-sex poster campaigns, and his criticism of the government's predictably stupid moral outrage to photographs of people with AIDS engaged in sexual activity (how contemptible it is to deny them the right to pleasure and joy). The unflinching nature of much of this material was to make an interesting contrast with safe- sex campaigns in Aotearoa New Zealand, as they were presented by Anton Mischewski in his paper Politicising Pleasures-Dangers or Contingent Possibilities: The (re)presentation of 'gay' bodies and HIV/AIDS. Our images were remarkably more demure, and more involved in a multi- cultural approach, a general observation about trans- Tasman differences perhaps.

The second delight of Gott's paper was the comparisons he drew between material produced from within the HIV I AIDS community, and that from mainstream gay culture. The comparison was particularly exciting when applied to pornography: the humour, pride and general hunkiness of, for want of a better term, HIV- positive porn, combined turn-on and tongue-in- cheek- critique. It accepted no pity,

(opposite above) PETER MADDEN In Site 1995 Mixed media, dimensions variable (opposite below)Relaxing at the Bodies in Question Symposium (left to right) Christopher Braddock, Pamela Zeplin, Miss Fancy Stitchin & Elizabeth Eastmond (Photograph: Pamela Zeplin) (right) THEO SCHOON Brent Hasselyn, Randwick 1973 Gelatin silver photograph (Private collection, Auckland)

and presented bodies and brains in a way other porn could do well to emulate. Indeed Gott's sexy paper similarly combined titillation and stimulation for the body and brain, making it a most appropriate response to the theme of the conference, discussing the contemporary crises of the body with dignity and humour and contributing an impressive benchmark for the rest of the conference to aspire to.

We were not to wait long for just such an aspiring paper. Two and a half hours after Gott's paper Ron Brownson took to the stage to perform Secret Salvage: The Unknown Photographs of Theo Schoon. And what a performance it was! Presenting male nudes by Schoon which had never been publicly shown before, Brownson gave us titillation not so much in the images themselves, which were too brilliantly striking to be dismissed with a wink and a titter, but in the way Brownson contextualised them, as evidence for the classic gay tragi-comedy: 'he only falls in love with straight men'. And so, in a piece of rhetorical brilliance, Brownson led us into a world where Schoon's models 'collaborated' with him in the making of the photographs. Schoon's seductions therefore, although supposedly taking place only through the camera, were nevertheless laced by Brownson with healthy doses of an unhealthy other,

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the 'undercover homo' of course, and an associated Aryan profile lurking beneath the clean-cut army-boy muscles and refreshingly guileless (but in Brownson's show, hopelessly suspicious) smiles. That Brownson's performance allowed us to enjoy indulging such pathos is surely an excuse worthy of Roger Blackley's question as to why, if none of Schoon's models were gay, some of the images Brownson did not show us contained single men and couples with erections?

Brownson's paper led into and dialogued with another very impressive contribution, Damien Skinner's The Native Body in the Photographs of Theo Schoon . This time Schoon's photos of native Balinese, and of himself in native Balinese garb, were used to discuss Schoon's theories of multi-culturalism. Through challenging readings of the images, and in discussions of anthropological work carried out by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead in Bali at the time of Schoon' s childhood there, Skinner was able to suggest that Schoon embodied and theorised a cultural strategy which rested on masquerade, not as a power of simulation, but rather as a valid, energetic and real engagement with another culture. I look forward to the MA thesis.

Questions of the body were taken into a very interesting area in the one dance session I attended. Dance is a formalised language and strict semiotic system, both in its forms of expression and in its performing body. As a distinct art form it requires a strict regime, an entire disciplinary apparatus, to produce the body which may write, which may dance. Dr. Eluned Summers- Bremmer's paper Reading Irigaray, dancing explored a feminist critique of dance as a disciplinary and phallocratic institution, but at the same time attempted to utilise Luce Irigaray's metaphor of dance, both practically and theoretically. Dr Summers-Bremmer gestured gracefully towards ways in which Irigaray's theories of female fluidity and multiplicity could be used to inform both a contemporary dance and a contemporary feminism, which critiqued older oppressive forms and itself embodied a new female body.

Having had my eyes so dramatically opened to dance as an exciting medium, the following paper, Charles McGuiness' s Depicting the Body on Film, fascinated them further. McGuiness showed a series of film and video excerpts which depicted dance, and explained many of the filmic strategies used. He also, and this was the guts of the matter, explored the nature of this embodiment, from body to film, whereby the translation of dance to film and video worked to disrupt the languages of each discourse. Through this process of (mis)translation, which was also obviously a process of creation, McGuiness was able to suggest a fascinating confluence of dance and film and video in the avant- garde. A dancing technological body.

And lastly, there are all the mentions that I have run out of space to discuss at length. There were many artist's talks given as part of the conference, and

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this was one of its strengths. I particularly enjoyed those given by Joyce Campbell, Christopher Braddock and John Cousins. I also met Susan Ballard after I had missed her paper, but feel convinced by that experience and other's comments that her paper Cyborg Theory Fictions of the Body was excellent. Lastly, I would like to mention the last paper I saw, Catherine Munro's The Passionate Body: Art the Act of Becoming. Having seen a few artist talks in my time I feel qualified to say that this one was truly amazing. Not only for the clear and informative way we were lead into the work, but especially in the brave and unflinchingly personal nature of the information we were given. It was as if we, as audience, had become part of Munro's artistic practice, for that is what the talk seemed in its power and honesty. You have created a fan! Courageous and spectacular, Munro's paper was certainly a fitting end to a fine conference.

The group show entitled Fleshly Worn, was 'co-ordinated' by Christopher Braddock who invited each of the 16 artists to make a new work in response to the title. The show's title obviously invited a wide range of response, and this was certainly the case. As a body it was diverse and surprising, both in the work itself, and in the strange juxtapositions created. My experience of the exhibition was double and completely different, first on opening night, and second, a few days later alone in the gallery.

Opening night was a biggie. The place was packed when I arrived, and John Pule had just begun his performance Pacific Holiday. Because of my late arrival I had a terrible view, and couldn' t see Pule himself. I could hear him however, as he read his poetry to the accompaniment of soft drumming. I could also see the slides he projected onto one gallery wall of various kitsch Pacific sunsets and smiling Pacific maidens. Pule' s disembodied voice gently described Pacific islands and passionate embraces, rising in intensity

and graphic detail to a point were I was made quite pointedly aware of the hot crush of bodies perspiring in the room. Just when the pitch was feverish and excitement was on the verge of embarrassment he backed off into a softer and more metaphoric poeticism: perfect timing. The performance ended with the slide projector turned off and Pule hanging his baptismal suit, its label reading 'Young Sir Made in New Zealand', on the wall. A quite beautiful artifact of Mormonism in the Pacific Islands, a very poignant reminder of religious and colonial interests united in the training of the young Pacific body, with an easy segue into Beuy's felt suit to finish.

The other highlight of the opening was the contribution of Peter Madden. This charmingly eccentric artist spent the evening carrying around a flash chilli bin, from which he distributed ice sculptures in the shape of curled coat hooks, the old types with a larger and smaller hook. These were lovely in themselves, but as a gift they contributed much towards focusing thoughts to the body. People were forced to confront a physical strangeness as the ice melted in your hands. How to deal with drips on the floor, whether to suck the inviting knob on the end, and what you did with it once the fun wore off were questions made intriguing by being played out in front of everyone else. Madden gleefully stirred the pot by encouraging mayhem and mess, in the process providing the means for a joyful transgression of the disciplined gallery space. I wish I'd seen his previous cup and saucer ice sculptures with hot coffee poured in! Beautiful chaos, this guy is brilliant!

Upon a more sober return to the gallery different things stood out. The two small Louise Bourgeois drawings were delightful, and added an 'international hip' feel to the show. Hips were also very much in play with Christopher Braddock's Midmost, a muscular piece in fleshy pink. I must say it is refreshing to see an art work that looks you straight in the groin. And it seemed to speak to both genders judging by the vigorous hip thrust I saw one young woman giving it. On a more material level Esther Leigh's elegant Lock used human hair to apply a fine floating line to lacquer, producing sperm- like shapes, and working with the show's title literally and metaphorically. In a different way Monique Redmond's work The Magician's Nephew also ran this double play. My immediate and strong reaction was to kneel on the low cushioned sculpture, and in fact the strength of the urge both struck me and highlighted the learnt prohibition to doing so. I thought it most appropriate that a work should insert itself into the fabric of regulations that control us in the gallery and make up the viewing body, in such a subtle but disruptive way.

Peter Madden's sculptural contributions to the exhibition were intriguing and again whimsically beautiful. In Site was an installation with a distinct blue inflection. A bell jar containing blue plaster kisses their lips pursed, puckered and fleshy, sexy surreal fruit to devour, sat upon an old wooden unit

(opposite) JOHN PUHIATAU PULE Does This Suit You? 1995 Suit, fine mat & pate (below) Fleshly Worn , installation at the ASA Gallery showing works by (left to right) Robert Jahnke, Christopher Braddock, Lucy Harvey, Esther Leigh & (foreground) Monique Redmond

with a fold-down door to the bottom shelf. This door was open and revealed on its inside the surface of the cavity covered in underwater photos: deep-sea diving and something of a shark situation. The fresh simplicity of the statement, to open the bottom drawer and immediately swim in the deep blue yonder, was irresistible. Madden's work combines a lightness of touch with a radicality of gesture which is breathtaking in its assuredness, as it is in its daring.

As with the symposium, the exhibition Fleshly Worn was exciting, fun and most energetic. They most certainly lived up to Spinoza' s ethical imperative for all bodies to attain active affection and the joyful knowledge they contain. I came.

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