Final Essay First Trimester

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 a specific strategy. 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. I hope to gain some ideas of how to queer things with images.

Strategy 1

Renate Lorenz describes the work of Félix Gonzáles-Torres (1957-1996) as quiet and minimalistic. It combines personal and political aspects and stimulates 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 cany 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 he 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 therefore 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's 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)

Strategy 2 - Subversives Potential in fotografischen Arbeiten & Der weibliche Akt und Weiblichkeit als Maskerade

According to John Berger the traditional gaze on a female body in western culture is alway a gendered one. The woman is always perceived within a given frame. While men act and look women appear and are looked at. From childhood on the woman has been taught to look at herself. The woman can find power in manipulating the way she is 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 herman 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. According to Elisabeth Bronfen the female gaze on the female body could be rather negotiated along the query if there is room for a questioning of conventional viewing traditions on behalf of either the photographer or the viewer. 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. In the first instance it's about training a critical gaze which allows the viewer to decide on the meaning of an image and how it produces this meaning.

Also with regard to the female nude the borders from identification and desire are floating. Does the depicted body reflect an ideal or a desire of the female photographer? There are a couple of possibilities to identify: photographer with her model, viewer with model or viewer with photographer. The naked body can be looked upon in different ways. The photographer could aim at a total identification with the depicted body or stress on the fragility of identification for example through distortion. The photographer can adopt the traditional gaze uncritical or question the objectification of the model. According to Bronfen at the base of each female nude there is the idea of the female form being monitored and controlled. It can't be depicted detached from its defining discourses about female sexuality. It reveals cultural conventions and clichés about female sexuality. Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman pick up the idea of femininity as masquerade. In many nude photos you can find the idea of the nude as a form of masquerade behind which the real bare body lies. The exposed body parts are equalized with its accessories. Even though a nude is shown we conceive it as vested. Especially naked breasts are due to their omnipresence not read as a sign of natural nakedness but rather as signifiers that show us that the body here is displayed as a desirable pictorial object. The breasts can be read as part of the decoration that reveal the body as coded as female.

Diese Formalisierungen der sich dem Blick hingebenden weiblichen Körper verweisen ebenfalls auf Weiblichkeit als kulturelle Konstruktion und Bildkörper.

Bibliography

Körper ohne Körper. Queeres Begehren als Methode, Renate Lorenz

Frauen sehen Frauen, Elisabeth Bronfen