Final Essay First Trimester

With this essay I would like to examine two different artistic strategies that could be considered queer. I'm very curious to find out what a queer artistic strategy could look like opposed merely depicting queer content. In order to take a closer look I chose two texts that each examine a specific strategy. The first text is called Körper ohne Körper. Queeres Begehren als Methode by Renate Lorenz and engages with the work of Félix Gonzáles-Torres and the way he approaches his art. The second text is Frauen sehen Frauen by Elisabeth Bronfen and examines the gaze on the female body.

In her text Körper ohne Körper. Queeres Begehren als Methode Renate Lorenz describes the work of Félix Gonzáles-Torres (1957-1996) as quiet and minimalistic. They combine personal and political aspects and stimulate a reflection about love and loss. The artist himself is HIV positive and loses his partner Ross 1991 to AIDS. He doesn't address this topic directly but relates his work more to minimal and concept art.

One of the works Félix Gonzáles-Torres exhibits after the death of his partner is called Untitled (Ross) and consists of small bonbons 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 bonbons 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 body discourses 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 bonbons 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.

Dieser Visualisierungsprozess stellt Sichtbarkeit her indem er die Bedeutungskonventionen zwischen dem Sichtbaren und den Wörtern zusammenbrechen lässt. Durch dieses Zusammenbrechen, meint Renate Lorenz, können Subjektivitäten repräsentiert und produziert werden, die nicht in der performativen Wiederholung gesellschaftlicher Normen aufgehen. Ein solcher Prozess erlaube, gesellschaftliche Veränderung zu denken.

Körper ohne Körper. Queeres Begehren als Methode, Renate Lorenz