Surrogate Proposal

Title: Surrogate

1) Abstract and colored photographs of bulbously muscled men while simultaneously video taping the process of us in the process of making the photographs. The images symbolize a past relationship - which is retreating into memory. This series will also serve as a portrait of myself in relation to these men and these bodies which remain in the background.

2) A video self portrait of myself expelling a goo or mucus like substance from my mouth, which will be set on a loop to show the substance being reabsorbed through my mouth, and than out again. This work is symbolic of an attempt to purge myself of my undesirable attributes, and the lingering memory of bulbuls man #1.

Motivation: I am concerned with this issue of comfort, fear, safety, and violence and I want to address this using these strong male bodies. I want to refer to the comforts provided by emotional partnerships, along side the personal and political concerns of safety and sexual violence. I will do this by further fetishizing strong and masculine male bodies that when partnered with, theoretically, offer safety.

Project One:

The next body of work will focus on male and female bodies (my own), depicted in photographs and simultaneously, in video recordings of the photographs being produced. My subject will be heavily muscled men, bulbous in shape, with grotesque protrusions and with statures which greatly exceed my own. I will photograph these men using extremely bright and saturated light, which will in certain areas, wash away detail and recognizability from the figure. The intention is to further warp the familiarity of the bodies, and alter the body builder association. The images will all be tightly framed on certain muscles, allowing the muscles to produce shadows on its own body using the artificial light. The presence of hair, or lack of will serve to create an unsavoury texture at such a close range.

In addition to the still images the project will include video documentation of the photos being created. The production aspect of this project is important for the way in which the entire project will be viewed. I am beginning this work by talking to men online and on dating websites which have the bulbous, protruding, muscled bodies. I explain to them that I work with photography, and that I would like to photograph them for a project of fit men. We are than meeting in an apartment or private studio. I will than video the process of the two of us cooperating in making the images. The reasons I have chosen largely muscled men is to highlight our difference is size, their power over me, and as a personal fetishization of a man that was once in my life, whose body I no longer have access to. He body was huge and shapely, with incredibly defined pecks, large thighs, and that stood at about 6’3. I had tried many times to make photographs of this man, but he insisted that I was "objectifying" him, and he was against it. He maintained that I could only have access to his body after being given permission, and that the photographs would detach him from our relationship. This relationship is over, and I am using these bodies as a surrogate for his. This series is about dominance, submission, and cooperation. In order to prevent my professional interest in photography from damaging our personal relationship, I respected that I had been forbidden from making images which depicted him as a sculptural object. My attempt now is to make an image of his body, which he believed would only have been an objectification of his body and his beauty. My goal is to make an image/object which represents that love and desire, which is retreating into memory- rending it symbolic.

Technically, I think this whole project is really a strange take on the self portrait because the work is more about me in relationship to these bodies than about the bodies themselves. Self portraiture is the only realm of photography I have ever really felt was valuable for me, but as I dealt with critique of my work, the reoccurring comment is that I was too typically female and typically beautiful for the images to be transgressive. In these previous works, I attempted to pair myself with a large masculine creature, the brahman, but the critique than became centred around the myth of Europa, animal/female partnership, mythology, and was again not about interpersonal power dynamics. The cattle project was created as an attempt for me to continue working with self portraits, but to put myself in relation to these strong and sometimes frightening creatures. As with sometimes with men, I found myself in potential danger, but with these animals, I in a way had the control as I was the one directing the scene. I entered into their environment, and placed myself with them - not the other way around.

Trying to move away from cattle, I started looking for a more powerful and exotic creature to juxtapose my own delicate form with, and I think that the most appropriately exotic creature will be these abnormally muscled men. An important addition to the work is this documentation of the image making, partly to show the threat of safety, and also the fact that I am volunteering to put myself in this situation. In most all male/female situations, the man is physically more capable of harm or dominance, and what I am doing with these photo/video shoots is taking control of their bodies with out having the muscular power to do so. In combination with my fetishization of physically strong men, I would like to deal with a more literally defined self portrait. As I read about the grotesque body, and these physical protrusions, I've thought about how I can use my conflicted mental state as a representation of the grotesque body. As I mentioned before, it has been a challenge for me to try and use my own body for this because of my feminine and soft features.

Project two: oral expulsion (working title)

In reading "The Grotesque Image of The Body" from Bakhtin on Rabelais, there is a focus on the grotesque body in two parts, the "upper stratum" and "lower stratum". From Rabelias's perspective, the grotesque lies in the lower stratum. For example, excrement, vomit, mucus, urine, and birth. However, I am not interesting in making work that involves any of these specific acts. But I am very interested in the image of the "gaping mouth" as a symbol for what goes in, and what comes out. I want to make a video shot and looped forwards and backwards of my own gaping mouth with a kind of goo, or mucus like substance that appears to be coming out of my body. This substance will ultimately all go back in via the rewind of the tape. The expulsion will a symbolic representation of my attempt to purge myself of my bad habits and personal attributes which were harshly outlined by my personal relationship with this muscled ex-lover. A notable issue in my failed relationships is that I am very much not soft enough in my demeanor, or feminine, or sweet. The death of our relationship became memorialised in the lyric by a Barrington Levy song, which read “Your pretty looks can't control me- Your pretty looks is deceiving, girl”. Since this experience, I have made a forceful effort to curb these noted distasteful attributes. I want to create this video which symbolises a dramatic expulsion of an internal substance, in order to purge myself of these bad traits, which ultimately will be re-consumed or absorbed. My hope is that by removing my face with the exception of my mouth, chin, and neck, and including what will appear to be the act of vomiting some gooey substance, I will be able to include myself in the work and maintain the grotesque aesthetic which I am able to capture with the cattle and the less feminine subjects. I am going to mimic, to some degree, the aesthetic of Marilyn Minters “Pink Caviar”. What I would like to avoid, which is a heavy feature of this work, the strong eroticization of the mouth. My work always has an eroticism to it, and that is not to be avoided entirely, but I do not want the work to be sorely sexual. I want to focus on this obscene act of expelling something from inside the belly, and then taking it all back down again. Even writing that now, it sounds pornographic, but according to Morawski in “Art & Obscenity” “pornography is undoubtedly obscene, whether or not it does serve to arouse. Instead, I aim to present seemingly pornographic images which hopefully which symbolize the emotional mind instead of the sexual body.