Final Essay First Trimester: Queer Strategies

Introduction

With this essay I would like to examine different artistic strategies that could be considered queer. I'm very curious to find out what queer artistic strategies could look like opposed to works that merely depict queer content. In order to take a closer look I chose two texts that each examine specific strategies. The first text is called Körper ohne Körper. Queeres Begehren als Methode (Bodies without bodies. Queer desire as method.) by Renate Lorenz and it engages with the work of Félix Gonzáles-Torres specifically with his work Untitled (Ross). The second text is Frauen sehen Frauen (women see women) by Elisabeth Bronfen and examines a subversive potential in the female gaze on the female body in photography.

Bodies without bodies

Renate Lorenz describes the work of Félix Gonzáles-Torres (1957-1996) as quiet and minimalistic, combining personal and political aspects and stimulating a reflection about love and loss. The artist himself was HIV positive and lost his partner Ross 1991 to AIDS. He doesn't address this topic directly but rather relates his work to minimal and concept art (also a reason his work survived during times of censorship). One of the works Félix Gonzáles-Torres exhibits after the death of his partner is called Untitled (Ross) and consists of small hard candy wrapped in shiny silver paper that are piled up in the corner of a gallery. The institution only acquires a certificate of the artist with the instruction to arrange the candy in a certain way and maintain its total weight by filling them up during the course of the exhibition. There is no political statement to be found. Nothing that places the work in the context of current debates about sexual identities, no norms are being challenged or altered and no discourses of bodies are being mentioned. So what makes this a queer work? According to Renate Lorenz the works of Félix Gonzáles-Torres are representations of bodies without bodies. These small pieces of hard candy don't have a fixed affiliation, they reflect queer subjectivities without depicting them. The title of the work Untitled (Ross) and the weight of the installation (which is about the weight of Ross) refer to a person: in this case to Ross Laycock, the deceased partner of the artist. The body is represented as a linguistic sign added to the visual. By thinking the visual together with text the artist picks up strategies of concept art. He doesn't use a visual signifier that points to an individual body or creates a resemblance to a person. Instead he breaks with the tradition of using a title that duplicates or explains the visual signifier. (Lorenz) Through this omission of visualizing Ross as another gay man or AIDS patient, the work doesn't allow the viewer to take on a voyeuristic position and scrutinize if the body of Ross shows signs of AIDS or if he looks desperate or at ease or if he is attractive or not. Félix Gonzáles-Torres doesn't refer to identities and he doesn't take the traditional position to represent marginalized social groups. He finds his way of representing in referring to absent subjects which are not predetermined by identity or gender, leaving room for projected desires. (Lorenz) Queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz states that Félix Gonzáles-Torres doesn't refer to identities but rather connotes them. There is no rational understanding or direct knowledge to be deducted from the work. It can't be understood without the question "What is this?". While the naming of Ross in the title refers to an emotional bond, loss, AIDS, love and sex you can see minimal and concept art in the formal approach. In order to examine this link Lorenz uses the term fantasy. With the help of fantasy the candy pieces resembling queer identities can be linked to queer history. It would be a matter of productive fantasy to connote identities rather than to refer to them. Connoted identity doesn't call on fixed categories but rather creates a kind of collective subjectivity that consists of various images, experiences and impressions. The viewer is encouraged to eat the candy and thereby reduces the weight of the work until its threatening disappearance - an analogy to the disappearance of the dying body. By sucking on the candy also a sexual component comes into play - there is more than a visual perception to this work. So the situation of the viewer perceiving the work is the following: A randomly mixed group of candy sucking people with various social affiliations and genders engage individually and collectively with a work composed of many small pieces that is introduced as a gay body. Based on this experience and visual impression they tie their knowledge, their experiences and their images. Lorenz states that this produces a mode of putting oneself in touch with the work. So Untitled (Ross) doesn't intervene in the economics of representation by confronting us with different bodies but by omitting exactly that. From the audience the artist takes away the position of the understanding gaze and asks them to take on a position of empathy - one that moans with him about his loss. (Lorenz)

Subversive potential in photographs of the female body

According to John Berger the traditional gaze on a female body in western culture is always a gendered one. The woman is perceived within a given frame - while men act and look women appear and are looked at. From childhood on women have been taught to look at themselves. But there is also a powerful component to that. Women can manipulate the way they are being looked at. She can identify with the male view but at the same time reflect and navigate it. While Berger morally condemns the objectification of the female body in form of a desirable image it can also be seen as a powerful means. Postmodern photographers such as Cindy Sherman oder Inez van Lamsweerde undermine the use of the female body by explicitly staging it as an image body. Cindy Sherman parodies the traditional image repertoire and Inez van Lamsweerde takes the objectification of the female body to the extreme. Both use the traditional gaze with a twinkling eye in order to unmask it. According to Elisabeth Bronfen every depiction of the female form has to deal with traditional iconography. It can be quoted or converted but it can't just formulate a pictorial language detached from conventional ways of seeing - we are to affected by the image repertoire. In Gender Trouble Judith Butler points out the possible power of parodistic appropriation of cultural standards by artists. In the American cultural studies the term of negotiated reading emerged that indicates the fragility in the relationship between viewing an image, fascination and identification. That means you can't assume a clear content such as for example the female body only as the object of the male gaze. Neither the meaning nor the viewers position is fixed - even the objectification of the female form by the viewer can be negotiated individually. It's up to the viewer to which extend he/she engages with the objectification of the female form or understands it as a self-reflective gesture. Regarding the negotiation of the female form Elisabeth Bronfen finds it helpful to look for room for a questioning of conventional viewing traditions on behalf of either the photographer or the viewer.

Conclusion

Queer strategies in art can differ a lot as we have seen in the examples of the work by Félix Gonzáles-Torres and Cindy Sherman and Inez van Lamsweerde. Where in Untitled (Ross) the topic of AIDS and loss is addressed very subtle, the appropriation of the male gaze in the works of Cindy Sherman and Inez van Lamsweerde is mimicked rather directly. As we have seen with the term negotiated reading the meaning of a work also depends on what kind of knowledge, experience, desire and expectations the viewer brings along in order to produce meaning. For me as an artist this means in a very simple way that I'm not in full control how a work will be read - I can only offer my perspective and leave it to the audience to make up their minds.

Bibliography

Körper ohne Körper. Queeres Begehren als Methode in Me(h)rwert Queer, Renate Lorenz (2009)

Frauen sehen Frauen, Elisabeth Bronfen (2001)