Presentation

Writing my MPR this week helped bring in to focus a question that had come to a head from doing the August step video project.

 

This was:

 

 The role of location (and of clothing) and the relevance of this added information it threw in to the mix when photographing or videoing walking. Initially I  had thought to concentrate on the focus being about the physical act of walking, but was finding that the steps were being inevitably connected to a location and was getting confused by this.

 

 

At the very start of this project in 2007 my aim was to find out whether there was a link to every day movements (e.g. walking) that we didn’t necessarily pay much attention to establishing, maintaining and as repository for  our identities. My initial idea was to present these movements in some way as a portrait, as something that could be seen to relate to a particular individual and their identity.

 

 

Because I had little prior knowledge of the theories and  philosophies that might support my initial idea it has taken me a deal of reading to create the thread to help clarify the idea behind my project, that is that our identities  are partly rooted in these movements, and that we process all sorts of information through our bodies, at a conscious and sub conscious level and that this information directly feeds into making us who we are and the person others perceive us to be which in turn then feeds back in to our understanding of our self.

 

The body and its movements when seen in the light of embodiment theory, as a ‘lived body’, can be seen to act as a sort of conduit which allows us to give and receive constant information about ourselves, others and the world.

 

‘The surface is where self meets what is other than self’.

 

Leder, D.  ‘The Absent Body.’ University of Chicago Press 1990 (p.11)

 

 

So the surface and/or environment where these movements take place (interface?) could be seen to become as relevant as the body movements themselves as the body movements don’t happen in isolation but take on meaning by happening in a context. (That context will need some defining too…e.g. geographical, sociological, environmental, and political to provide it with understood frame work of relevance?)

 

‘The body is at once a biological organism, a ground of personal identity, and a social construct.’

 

Leder, D.  ‘The Absent Body.’ University of Chicago Press 1990 (p.99)

MPR

This project has evolved as a response to my interest in exploring the link between our movements (for the purpose of the MA, specifically non body language movements) and our identities.

My research has come to be  focused  around the link between identity and movement, of embodiment and disembodiment, the materialized, de materialized and the philosophies of Descartes and Merleau-Ponty.

 

Throughout unit one I have focused on constructing a methodology in order to explore these ideas.

Videoing movement, slowing footage down, lifting stills allowed me to make slide shows and short video animations which explore movements

http://www.slideshare.net/susanmort/white-sheet-1

and to ask questions about appropriate ways of filming these movements. E.g. what areas of the body to film, whether or not to include the face, question the role of background and environment?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkI_7T1LPUg

 

I have been using the following programmes

Credo: for animation from video footage of the body.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoYR_sMg-F0

Korsakow: to experiment with a non linear format.

 Isadora:  to create a piece where video and physical interaction may take place in real time.

 

Through out August 2009  I attempted to provide a more systematic and structured context for presenting these movements and have done his by attempting to add an empirical element by wearing a pedometer to record the number of steps I take daily and keep a video diary of myself walking for a short period each day.

 

“But in reality the body is changing form at every moment; or rather there is no form, since form is immovable and reality is movement. What is real is the continual change of form: form is only a snapshot view of a transition.”
                                                             —Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution 

 

‘The surface is where the self meets what is other than self.’  Leder, D. ‘The Absent Body.’ The University of Chicago Press 1990 (page 11)

 

The meeting point between our bodies and the surfaces they encounter will be the starting point to explore the link between identity and movement .

In order to continue this I aim to:

1. Develop core project and methodologies employed to a more specific view point.

2.  Create  better definition of key words e.g.: identity/surface/environment/embodiment.

3. Book motion tracking facilities at Newcastle University.

4. continue to produce paper based pieces alongside digital pieces. http://www.slideshare.net/susanmort/steps-august-2009

5. Produce prototype for final piece.

Have been taken up over the last week with printing and putting the summer issue of Mail Art together. It is quite a time consuming business as a lot of the pages need hand feeding through the printer and the each page has to be folded. Given that there are 100 copies in each issue and around 9 A4 folded sheets it is a lot of work.

 

Last Tuesday I met the online students in year one who I will be joining. It was very nice to meet them and they were a very welcoming and dynamic group. Looking forward to working alongside them.

 

 

I had been trying to draft together an outline of my project last week to update my thoughts and post on the blog. I put the outline to the group. I’m not sure if it was very clear. 

 

Anyway here is the outline:

 

 

The original area of study for my project was about the ‘lost’ physical ephemeral body movements in relation to our identities.

 Movements that we generate everyday but are not aware of and which are absent in our online lives and to question the possible changes with our communications and identities this may bring about.

Initially I took some time to identify the type of movements I wanted to focus on and settled on non body language movements and then set about to research if there is a connection to our identities with these movements.

If it could be proved that these movements do in fact feed back in to the construction of self/identity then it is relevant to try to understand how that might affect our consciousness and relationships, understanding of self/others when taken into a digital arena where those movements are no longer necessary or relevant.

As I carried on with my research I wondered why this phenomenon might be so readily accepted and have recently begun to look at the idea of Cartesian duality.

I have just got a book by Drew Leder ‘The Absent Body’ which looks at the inner, visceral body which is generally absent from conscious experience.

I have been interested in the idea of this hidden visceral consciousness becoming more apparent during times of ill health and have been drawing on my own experience of health issues and that of my son who has on going health issues to do with allergies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putting Mail art together although a lot of work is something I enjoy. I like the focused repetitive movements. It is a process that demands concentration. Unlike an activity like knitting where it is possible to allow your hands to do something familiar while you focus else where. I want to try to think some more about defining the type of movement and awareness. I wonder if it is something we all share to the same degree or if it varies?

 

Frank Jackson’s Mary’s Room

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary’s_room

 

The spiralling philosophies from it intrigue me.

 

 

 

Do we all experience our physicality to the same degree? Is there a gender difference in this experience? Does this experience change with age/ health?  How would one begin to establish any differences in something so subjective especially if it were done with a verbal questionnaire? How does this impact in our developing digital life and identity?

 

What about the advancements in digital technology which has lead to games such as Wii fit which taps into the physicality of the player but provides a nonphysical arena to enact these transferred movements? Will these games and type of physical interaction have an impact on our own physical awareness? Will the fact that these actions happen in a non physical arena develop or subtly change our sense of self?

 

 

During last weeks chat Jonathan asked me to explain my practical work for the project, this was surprisingly a little difficult, but it did tie in to something I have been thinking about and that is that I would like more space to make work in.

 

Here are some photos of my work room which I share with Samuel.

 

It is a nice room but not large and not really somewhere that is easy to make larger work and I need to think round this.

 

Also I would like to change the title of my project to be a little clearer about defining the idea involved if that is possible.

 

 

 

 

I have been thinking about the body in digital arts and the idea I mentioned a couple of posts ago that digital media have provided me with a wonderful new set of tools to engage in examining physicality and to try to question whether this digital environments impact on our physicality and therefore our identities.

 

It has made me try to re examine an idea of the body as missing or absent in our digital lives impacting and thereby possibly subtly altering our real physical body/identity and expectation, due to the changed mental and physical interaction we experience when engaging in digital media or virtual worlds.

 

It has also made me re examine the query about defining digital art. Is digital art defined as any art work using digital tools like cameras, printers or is it an art form that exists only in digital form, or can it be a hybrid form?

 

I would like to try to look at these questions a little more.

 

During some on line research I came across this online article by professor Alejandro Lleras of the University of Illinois in the  the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Journal, about his findings on how the  body’s movements influence problem solving..

 

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/body_movements_influence_problem_solving_132511.html

 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/uoia-bmc051209.php

Visited the DLI Museum in Durham to see the Jerwood drawing prize 2008 exhibition at last week.

Interested by the digital piece ‘ Trans Siberian Window drawing 200′ by Neville Gabie.

Partly through seeing this piece helped to push a query that has been edging in to my thoughts: that digital media has provided me with a new tool with which to question and examine physicality. And it is beginning to make me question my previous thoughts around the possible change in our understanding of our/ and need of physicality in the digital age. If I am finding digital media useful in examining aspects of physicality, it could be indicative of the fact that digital media isn’t necessarily bringing a dislocation from the physical self.

Reading ‘Digital Art’ by Christiane Paul (Pub. Thames and Hudson) raises these questions again.

Christiane Paul states:

‘Current interface standardization has led to an overall restraining mechanism for the human body, which is forced to conform to the computer and monitor – although these standard interfaces will probably radically change in the future. the tension between embodiment/ disembodiment can not be constructed as a choice of either/or but has to be understood as a reality of both/and.’

(Chapter 3: Themes in Digital Art. p.170)

Paul quotes the artist Eduard Kac :

‘The passage in to a digital culture – with its standard interfaces that requires us to  pound at a keyboard and sit behind a desk while staring at a  screen – creates a physical trauma that amplifies the psychological shock generated by ever faster cycles of  technological invention, development, and obsolescence.’

(Chapter 3: Themes in Digital Art. p.170)

http://www.ekac.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Kac

Have also been thinking about the role of our skins in social interaction, as Samuel’s is deteriorating again with the increasing pollen allergens.

And thinking about how much one is judged by the appearance of skin… how skin is linked to identity / self/ self image.

The idea that skin has an ability to help assign or affirm, our place in society (eg: in providing clues to age, health, status, race, gender.) for others when coming in to visual contact with us.

How the notion of invasion. Of the body as a state, of a fortress that is breached by infection and therefore perceived as a threat to others and society, as something devalued.

Donna Haraway in ‘Simians, Cyborgs and Women.’ (Free Association Books, London 1991)  states:

‘My thesis is that the immune system is an elaborate icon for principle  systems of  symbolic  and material ‘difference’ in late capitalism.’

(Chapter 10: ‘ The Biopolitics of postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of self in Immune system disorders’  p.204)

 

 

I mentioned in the last post that illness has created a kind of chaos in which routine and expectations are disrupted and dissolved.

 

Currently perceive myself as existing in a fragile sort of non space during this year out from MADA, health, identity and expectations of my own capacities to do anything change on a day to day basis.

 

The aim of my project was to create a sense of our physical everyday movements and explore  the link between them to our identities through non body language movements.

 

 Have realised that I have been very over ambitious in my aims for this project.

This is why I have been unable to bring clarity to the outcome of the final piece.  

 

The aim for the final show piece was to create an installation that could be walked through.

 

 

There is quite a big issue around finance and the necessary technology etc. to produce the final piece  even if I  hire it out.

 

Is sponsorship an option worth looking to?

 

 The question that then stares me in the face is: am I the right place for a sponsor to be able to take seriously?

 

My mother was always fond of quoting G K Chesterton at me: that a true artist only needed a pencil and a paper bag to draw on….

 

 

 

Do I get the piece shown down in London or up here? I could never guarantee getting to London, but sadly the same question hangs over being able to navigate space and time up here. Also there would then be the necessity to provide a link for it to Camberwell to have some sort of presence at the final show.

 

It would be exciting to be able to afford to link the 2 sites…. need to think about it.

 

 

Dance City in Newcastle have a studio with projectors which is used for interactive, v-jing and video work. I was hoping to use that space at least to try out some ideas there and resolve if maybe it would be suitable to create the final piece there.

 

Failing that there would be the possible fall back of  hiring the community centre where I filmed last summer.

 

 Also another issue confronting me is I can’t see the step ahead of MADA. I am not employed in the arts; my health is under question, my time divided between being a carer to my son and providing a home education for him. Free time is rare, time to visit galleries, museums etc is frighteningly negligible.

 

Need to look at my parameters very carefully; they  go a long way to defining the form of the outcome.

 

This course has provided an environment and platform  in which I could still produce work and share ideas, access current practices, ideas and individuals.

 

 

That very environment has come to present a fundamental question about the link between our movements and identity. That is whether online interaction and what the loss of physical interaction may create or change in us.

 

 

If we exist as social creatures how does taking away the physical from much of our social communication change/challenge us? Is that change important? How might I create something relevant in support of it with in my parameters?

 

 

U2W4

                          some rough notes….    

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

U2 W3

Unit 2 week 3:

 

 

Have been reading Susan Sontag’s

 

Illness as Metaphor and Aids and Its Metaphors

 

(Penguin 2002)

 

Sontag defines how certain illness (Tuberculosis) is thought to ‘occasion some kind of self-transcendence’ (Aids and Its Metaphors, Chapter 4 p123)

 While others are seen as a plague, (cancer, syphilis, aids, rabies) dehumanizing especially those that result in amputation or disfigurement.

 

This questions why a society should need to vilify certain conditions and demonize them in this way.

 

Question: does or might the virtual world or internet communities provide a platform of democracy in this area?

 

By the use of avatars? Or does the use of avatars establish and promote an increased reinforcement of ideal of happiness and success residing solely off the back of an-unachievable human perfection?  Of the  little research I have done in to second life, many communities exist in a seeming paradises of an inhuman ‘perfection’. In believing that we should we not have ‘flaws’, in some way eradicating these ‘flaws’ in our physicality, we believe will live ‘happy ever after’ like the princess in a fairy tale?

 

 They could be seen to present a form of escapism, extending the view that there should be nothing uncomfortable or bad in a ’successful’ and ‘happy’ life, up holding the concept that a form of unattainable physical perfection is necessary and the only means to create a utopia which is obtained with very few demands or difficulties.  Given the very real concerns around the issues to do with size 0, weight, appearance and self esteem that surrounds the fashion industry in relation to young and teenage individuals this escapism could be seen to carry some of the same messages and issues. 

 

 

Question: how much is the internet engaging, raising, challenging and changing our use and ideas of and around stereotypes?

 

 

Chapter 6 looks at how governments and politicians harness our primal fears and direct /transfer them towards illness or stereotype to achieve a political outlook or out come.

 

 

Definitions…we are driven by a need to define ourselves and those around us

These understandings/definitions labels become synonyms and stereotypes, which bind and use definition to control a society or groups of people.

 

 

We are all driven by basic human instincts and psychosocial, psychological urges, flight or fight, urge to reproduce, to look for the fittest and strongest, xenophobia, either in the stranger or alien or in illness.

 

The issue becomes to challenge these initial responses and to think beyond them, rather than to veneer over them and harness them as a means to lead societies.

 

 

We are still perusing the perfect physical specimen (‘he/she is fit’). Driven by the urge to find the best partner to reproduce with and have by our side as a status symbol. Why are we still driven in this virtual world to pander to these stereotypes? Or gift ourselves with what we may feel lacking in our physical reality? Why can we never be enough in our own right?

 

We can be defined by our physical appearance and by our movements, are we stiff, bent, slow, showing signs of age? And a value placed on us, a stereotype to define us and mould us.

 

 

If we are constantly adapting our sexual identities in order to be successful in our society’s ever shifting and redefining out look in relation to its changing needs, why are we holding on to very basic instincts of physicality that we know in many ways to be out moded intellectually and scientifically?

 

Stelarc is proposing that by replacing no longer necessary organs the body could be used to house a more relevant technology. That is the very challenging concept the cyborg. Then what happens to definition through physicality, gender, race, illness? Would it become obsolete ?

 

 

Would the template of illness that we have bestowed already on our technology (the computer ‘viruses’ that Susan Sontag remarks on in ‘Aids and Its Metaphors’) become incorporated in to the cyborg? Would we in incorporating technology into our physical bodies also bring and maintain this idea of illnesses and its defining role?

 

u2w2

My main conclusion this week is that gender may change and adapt in response to society’s needs.

This is some of the stuff I have been looking at over the past week. I am reluctant to get into gender issues but it seems inseparable to issues of identity which I am trying to examine and link to movement of a person.

http://www.n5m.org/n5m3/pages/programme/links/cyberfem.htm cyber feminism

http://www.obn.org/inhalt_index.html

http://www.obn.org/inhalt_index.html

“Cyberfeminism is…
– a feminism, of course–focussing on the digital medium.
– a vehicle for discussing certain methods in theory, art or politics.
– the updated version of feminism dedicated to new political issues raised by global culture and media society.
– a new product and a marketing strategy at the same time.
– much more than every other feminism linked to aesthetic and ironic strategies as intrinsic tools within the growing importance of design and aesthetics in the new world order of flowing pancapitalism. …”

Taken from the above link

Sadie plant

http://www.t0.or.at/sadie/sadie.htm

http://www.obn.org/inhalt_index.html

Vulvas with a Difference Faith Wilding    Introduction An age-old problem has resurfaced–with a difference–in the biotech century. The problem: What does woman (sic) want? This question, once so exasperatedly asked by Freud–as a corollary to his finding that woman “represents a lack” (of a penis)–is once again being vigorously addressed in the practices of (mostly) male scientists and doctors with new biotechnological and medical processes at their disposal. Freud¹s formulation of the question presumes an essentially identical desire (for the penis) in all women regardless of age, race, sexual preference, education, economic status, or geographical residence. It also represents “woman” as essentially lacking (because she has been found “wanting?”) and as problematic, mysterious, unknowable, and eternally unsatisfiable. Freud makes it clear that the “problem”–traditionally described by the term “hysteria”–is that women “want” sexual pleasure; they want to know how to have it, how to get it, and how to control and ensure the supply. In Europe and the US, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century responses to the problem of female “hysterical² anorgasmia and decreased or absent sexual pleasure often called for medical interventions and were sometimes quite drastic, including painful body binding, purging, bloodletting, nasty douches and bath regimes, confinement to bed, bland diets, and in worst cases, hysterectomy and/or clitoridectomy. Women experiencing “vaginal relaxation”(1) and vulvar and vaginal damage due to too frequent childbirth, inadequate medical knowledge of women’s genital structures and functions, and the total ignorance of the mechanisms of the female orgasm, had nowhere to turn except to their doctors, because the traditions of women healers and midwives with experience and knowledge of women’s bodies had long since eroded in the moralized and rationalized body practices of the Enlightenment. A valuable light is cast on age-old treatments of female disturbances by Dr. Rachel Maines (2). She documents that an effective treatment for hysterical women since the Greeks had been “pelvic massage”–sometimes performed by male doctors, but more often by female midwives–to relieve women of the sexual tensions, pelvic edema, and nervous depressions brought on by the lack of orgasmic release in marital penetrative coitus. Maines chronicles the invention of the vibrator–originally designed to relieve doctors of the tedium of hand manipulation of women’s genitals (pelvic massage)–and its fairly rapid adoption as a tool of “personal care” in private households; and shows that this technological solution to the “problem” of women’s complicated sexual needs contributed to letting (male) lovers and husbands off the hook in terms of learning to satisfy their partner’s sexual desires. At the same time it supported the centrality of penetrative coitus climaxing in male orgasm as the dominant form of heterosexual practice. Meanwhile, in many north African countries such as Kenya, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mali, Egypt, and Chad (as well as in many parts of the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as large parts of Indonesia, and to a lesser extent in other parts of the world), varying forms of female circumcision and female genital mutilation (FGM) have been practiced for centuries (see the World Incidence of Genital Mutilation map included in this article). While there are deep and complex reasons for the origin and perpetuation of these practices, nearly all African and Western researchers who have studied them–as well as the evidence of extensive testimony from women on whom these operations have been practiced–agree that most of these procedures are extremely painful and dangerous to a woman¹s health; they usually destroy women¹s sexual pleasure, and are performed to “purify” and control women¹s sexuality (3). Thus, though there seems to be no comparable social construction of female hysteria in these countries, it is significant that the circumcision practices have the effect of controlling and curtailing women¹s sexual pleasure, which must somehow seem a threat to social order and masculine power. And although they are often compared, female genital circumcision can in no way be equated with the circumcision of men, even though some circumcised men do report diminished sexual sensation due to the loss of their foreskins. It is also important to note that in the past decade or so in the US, there has been a fairly vocal revolt against the almost universally adopted medical (and sometimes religious) practice of routine male circumcision right after birth. The Biotech Solution “You don’t have to fly to LA or NY to get the hottest trend in the world of cosmetic surgery–labiaplasty and vaginal tightening, also known as a “designer vagina.” (Website) Currently, biotechnologies and new microsurgical medical technologies (MedTech) are being used to pioneer new flesh technologies. MedTech is being used by doctors to address the Freudian “lack” directly by re-engineering the body of the woman rather than by treating her psyche. Consider, for example, this website text describing “Vaginal Rejuvenation through Designer Laser Vaginoplasty”: “Designer Laser Vaginoplasty is the aesthetic surgical enhancement of vulvar structures, such as the labia minora, labia majora and mons pubis”(4). Texts on these websites make clear that what is lacking or inadequate is the woman’s body and the structure of her sexual organs–not medical knowledge and sexual practices. Though many men still complain that they cannot “find” the clitoris, recent research into the structures of the clitoris and vulva have revealed an astonishing new terrain of erectile tissue and nerve networks which show that the size of the clitoris is much bigger than previously depicted in medical literature. Part of the problem of the invisibility of the clitoris (the dark continent) is that the ancient methods of comparative anatomical studies of male and female genitalia still permeate scientific and medical literature and practice. In a recent article, Dr. Helen E. O’Connell and colleagues pointed out that even the nomenclature for the female genital parts is consistently incorrect: “We investigated the anatomical relationship between the urethra and the surrounding erectile tissue, and reviewed the appropriateness of the current nomenclature used to describe this anatomy. . . A series of detailed dissections suggests that current anatomical descriptions of female human urethral and genital anatomy are inaccurate”(5). Girls and women in the US are routinely taught to call their external sexual organs “vagina” (as in the current Off-Broadway show, “Vagina Monologues”), rather than “vulva.” The vagina is not the homologous organ to the penis, and the incorrect nomenclature perpetuates the invisibility and unmentionability of the female sexual (orgasmic) organs–the vulva and clitoris. The subversive 70s feminist use of the term “cunt” (as in “cunt art”) was a direct response to this problem of naming. However, now that vast amounts of money can be made from new microsurgical and biotechnological medical interventions, some scientists/doctors (in the US and Canada) have decided to “educate” themselves about the “problems” of women so they can fix them once and for all in the postmodern (“post-hysterical”) way–through medical and bio-technology: To date there has been no such interest, (as that dedicated to the correction of male impotence) let alone research, in vaginal relaxation and its detrimental effects on sexual gratification. . . The obstetrician and gynecologist is looked upon as the champion of female health care. . . Your doctor is a scientist. His (sic) knowledge is based upon this science (the science of obstetrical and gynecological specialty.) This science is founded upon research, bio statistics, established facts (sic), theories, and postulates. If there is none of this science pertaining to vaginal relaxation and sexual gratification then it doesn’t exist. It won¹t exist until we look for it. Therefore, let it begin now! (6) And so the scientist/doctors are off and running. Purely elective vulvar/vaginal surgeries that are done for “aesthetic reasons only” can cost between $2,000 and $3,500 for a fairly simple “plumping” (liposculpture) of the outer lips of the mons, using “unsightly fat” suctioned from the inner thighs. Or, you may be advised to employ labiaplasty to shorten and symmetricalize those dangerous, dangly vulvar lips that might interfere with horseback riding, wearing pants, or be painfully drawn inside during intercourse. (“Labiaplasty is a reduction of the labia minora, the flaps of skin which form the lips of a woman’s genitalia and cover the clitoris and vaginal opening.”) Or, for women from certain “ethnic” groups: “when a woman marries and consummates the marriage she must bleed to prove virginity to her partner . . . since in this day and age (due to exercise, and physical activity) the hymen is rarely intact…(some) women do request a hymen repair”(7). It is no surprise that this latter sentence is the only mention of “ethnic” groups or practices that I found in the websites and online literature from vaginal rejuvenation clinics. I found no mention of the practices of female genital mutilation, and of the connection between the new MedTech surgical practices and FGM, though these doctors must surely be aware of it. The new vulvar and vaginal surgical technologies would be put to much better use in helping women seeking reconstruction and healing of sexual organs mutilated and damaged by FGM practices, than in making unnecessary “aesthetic” interventions on perfectly healthy women. Technologies with a Difference “Women are multi-orgasmic . . . From this factual data, laser vaginal rejuvenation was designed in order to enhance sexual gratification for women who, for whatever reason, lack an overall optimum architectural integrity of the vagina.”(Emphasis mine) For most affluent (white) Western women accustomed to rejuvenating their looks by plastic surgery, the re-engineering and aesthetic enhancement of the vulva is a so-called “elective” procedure, and seems to represent a voluntary consumer excess not that much different from a nose or breast job–although the term “voluntary” is questionable here, considering the disciplinary pressures of western beauty standards. By contrast, for nonwestern women, female genital alteration, including many forms of female circumcision and infibulation, is generally a mandatory ritual or cultural procedure usually practiced on women by women. With globalization and increased East to West migration, women from societies still practicing various forms of female circumcision sometimes seek these services from qualified obstetricians/gynecologists in modern hospitals. Such is the compelling nature of this cultural custom, however, that many mothers are still sending their daughters back to their countries of origin for these ritual procedures, where they may be performed by the traditional female circumcisers, usually operating with rusty tools and no anesthetics or disinfectants. Despite years of organization against Female Genital Mutilation practices on the part of many Africans and Westerners–which resulted in legal bans of the practices in some countries like Guinea, Niger, and Sudan–the bans are no match for the compelling cultural rituals. In many parts of Egypt, for example, though hospitals had been forbidden to perform clitoridectomies “the procedure was now carried out in barber shops and similar, non-official places . . . and led to an increase of complications”(8). The paradoxical situation then is that women from quite different economic, social/cultural backgrounds and geographical origins are undergoing vulvar surgery and alterations for completely different reasons–and with differing results–all of which however have their roots in patriarchal gender practices. The (western) aesthetic vulvar surgery is claimed (by doctors and patients) to enhance sexual enjoyment for the woman, although there are no medically persuasive reasons or proofs given for this. In actuality there is a likelihood that nerves and sensitive tissues are being damaged, and that erectile tissue–which is far more extensive than is depicted in standard medical and anatomy texts–is being reduced and replaced by nerveless scar tissue. So even though in these operations the clitoris is not excised (although it sometimes is “repositioned”) there is loss and disturbance of sensitive tissues, and hence probably also of subtle and deep sensation (9). Undaunted by the contradictions, the aesthetic surgeon can win three times: S/he treats the high-income Western spenders who are seeking “enhanced sexual gratification” through genital surgery; s/he treats the women forced by their cultural traditions to alter their genitals with the result of controlling and curtailing or destroying female sexual pleasure; and s/he reconstructs the deformities and traumas caused by botched circumcision operations. Nowhere in the online or other literature from the aesthetic “rejuvenation” clinics which practice this new surgery is there any mention of other ways of treating “vaginal relaxation,” or of helping women achieve more sexual pleasure by other than medicalized means. Nowhere is it mentioned that during second-wave feminism, for example, women gathered to teach each other about their sexual organs and bodies: how to have orgasms, how to give themselves and other women pleasure, how to teach men to give women pleasure. Nowhere are vibrators, dildos, Kegel exercises, counseling, sensual massage, pleasurable body practices, or other (non-medical) self-help practices mentioned. The literature works by seduction, promising scientifically enhanced sexual pleasure and improved performance. It insists that women are (and ought to be) multi-orgasmic and if this isn’t happening for you something may be wrong with your body, and you should hasten to the nearest surgeon for the medicalized, technological fix. To cap it off, there is no awareness in the literature of the explicitly heterosexual assumptions of this type of surgery, and of the way in which it reinforces the idea of female lack. Neither do we see any discussion about the problematic of western doctors making it possible for nonwestern women (and men) to perpetuate their harmful and painful “customs” by using “safe” and “modern” western technologies. This would seem to be an important medical ethics discussion. Although laws have been passed in the US forbidding female circumcision practices, doctors are increasingly being called upon to do these operations, or to repair botched genital jobs on women who come to emergency rooms. It seems that many Western feminists have been too reluctant to participate fully in this discussion for reasons of false race consciousness, and lack of understanding how related it is to issues raised by the new flesh technologies now pervading western culture. (Anti) Aesthetics of the Vulva “Aesthetic surgery of the female external genitalia has been neglected by physicians. However, awareness of female genital aesthetics has increased owing to increased media attention, both from magazines and video. Women may feel self-conscious about the appearance of their labia majora (outer lips) or, more commonly, labia minora (inner lips). The aging female may dislike the descent of her pubic hair and the labia and desire re-elevation to its previous location. Very few physicians are concerned with the appearance of the female external genitalia. A relative complacency exists that frustrates many women”(10). Surely one of the strangest aspects of the new female genital surgery are physicians’ website texts (such as the one cited above) that sound rather self-conscious, and seem to be included for purposes of self-justification (or perhaps to pre-empt people wondering why a self-respecting doctor would get into the vulva re-engineering business?) An examination of some of the terms used in these texts (for example, “elective vaginal enhancement,” “female genital aesthetics,” “vaginal rejuvenation,² or “optimal architectural integrity of the vagina,”) reveals that there is an implicit set of desirable traits or aesthetic standards for the female genitals–at least according to the doctors “lack” is now operable. These implicit aesthetics for female genitalia need to be made explicit, and a subversive (anti) aesthetic suggested in their place. What aesthetics of the vulva are revealed in an examination of these Web pages and of other mass-circulation images? The passage quoted above states that “awareness of female genital aesthetics has increased owing to media attention, both from magazines and video.” One can only assume that what is being referred to here are features on “Designer Vaginas” in such magazines as Cosmo, but probably not the increased media coverage and feminist activism regarding banning female genital mutilation. Referring to the terms found on the websites of “aesthetic” surgeons, it seems clear that in the plastic surgery profession at least, female genitals are seen as lacking in youthful resilience and appearance, tightness, architectural integrity, symmetry, dainty labia size, tasteful hair distribution, and plumpness. A template of the ideal vulva emerges: The tight, small, pulsing, plump, juicy, glistening, pearly pink, virginal-yet-hot cunt found in pornography, art, or erotic literature. As can be seen on the website before and after pictures of labia reduction operations, vulvas are surgically reconstructed to look very much like wounds. The crinkly, “redundant” labia–which shield the exquisitely sensitive clitoris from too harsh an approach and too direct a touch, and which form a moist, protective surface of rubbing and touching flesh that engorges with pulsing blood during sexual arousal–are drastically reduced. The entire vulva becomes a slit, a gash, a hole, a wound, an orifice just right for penetrating male entry and direct access to the vagina. Here lack becomes “enhancement” through diminishment–a peculiar logic indeed. The glowing testimonies of enhanced women that appear on the web pages talk only in the most vague terms of the wonderful new lives that this operation has given them. Advanced digital visualization technologies are currently giving new insights into heretofore invisible and unexplored territories of the interior body (see the citation from the work of Dr. Helen O’Connell above). Seizing upon these technologies, scientists and plastic surgeons are leaping into the breach to claim and redesign the newly discovered territories–much as the conquistadores and colonists did in the newly discovered Americas. (In this connection, one wonders how, and whether, the sexual proclivities of different colonial cultures [Dutch, French, Portuguese, British, etc.] were influenced by the differing aesthetics which seem to govern the various styles of African female circumcision?) Because language and naming construct the medico/scientific perception and treatment of the body–as well as clarify the phenomenological experiences of the body–women need to inform themselves about these new scientific discoveries of vulvar and clitoral structures, and feminists should insist that scientists and doctors be educated in the feminist research about female desire, pleasure and sexuality. Only then will their eyes be fully opened to the possible implications of the newly discovered erectile and pleasure structures. Many consumers it seems, are all too willing to leave behind enjoyment of organically various bodies, and are looking to technology and science to give them new ways of creating ideals for the new technologized body, regardless of what they may have to sacrifice and suffer by doing so. The existing medico/scientific aesthetic for female genitals seems to have been affected only in some respects by the cunt celebrating 70s, the feminist-jouissance-theory 80s, and the bad-grrl 90s. The jouissance and libidinal excess pursued by many feminists as a path to autonomy and power, is being replaced in public discourse by the full-scale consumer spectacle of the cyborg porn babe, whose predatory surface is adorned by every well-worn sign of coded sexuality that the market will bear. An (anti) aesthetic of the vulva might posit first of all that looks and surface are not the important thing when it comes to vulvas. Instead, sensation and feeling, and the excitation of deep structures are pre-eminent. Perhaps our scopophilic culture desires to establish once and for all a visual “proof” of the female orgasm so it can be compared to that of the male? Could it be that a dangerous precedent was set in the early 70s, when Masters and Johnson, the avowed champions of the female orgasm and of the multi-orgasmic prowess of women, began to measure and chart female orgasms in the lab? Eye opening as this information was in so many ways, it doubled the efforts to quantify, measure, and represent the female orgasm, this time by medical charts and graphs, rather than by psychological or poetic terminology. Masters and Johnson are still invoked by the new pleasure surgeons, who, under the banner of championing female orgasmic capability and entitlement, wield their knives in order to give women the optimal vulva/vagina for enhanced sexual satisfaction, for better loving through surgery. Can feminists counteract these entrenched views and disseminate a new (anti) aesthetic of the vulva? How can we counter the medicalized or pornographic images of vulvas that are usually the only ones offered for public view? Feminist artists tried to reclaim the cunt as a powerful pleasure source in the early 70s; and the vulva as a sign of sexual contention and gender construction has made many appearances in the art of the 80s and 90s. In everyday life, men, lesbians, and doctors see many more vulvas than most heterosexual women ever do. There are few possibilities for women to see other women¹s vulvas in a pleasurable, convivial, or desiring environment. Most women probably have not even thought twice about the looks of their vulvas (many haven’t dared look), but this new worry is being created (in post-hysterical terms) by the existence and deployment of new flesh technologies. Subversive tactics that critique the commercial impulses and point up the ridiculousness and potential physical danger of such operations are called for. Rather than going for reduction surgery, for example, why not demand augmentation surgery, or other manipulations that will enlarge the labia minora? Why not have parties where women can examine, compare, and explore the myriad different forms of vulvas? Why not set up spa days (paid for by medical insurance) in which women teach themselves and their sexual partners about female sexuality and desire. Let¹s educate children in the proper nomenclature and sexual and pleasure functions of the female genital organs. Above all, let¹s call for resistance to the unquestioned technological “solutions” to issues that have profound psychological, emotional, cultural, and even political origins and histories. Let us not obliterate the vulva as we now know it–before we do know it! Notes: (1) Vaginal relaxation is “the loss of the optimum structural architecture of the vagina. . . the vaginal muscles become flaccid with poor tone, strength, and support.” According to statistics, 30 million American women suffer from this. Just think of that marketing possibility! (2) Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women¹s Sexual Satisfaction. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). (3) “Types of Female Genital Mutilation: Circumcision or Sunna: Removal of the prepuce or hood of the clitoris, with the body of the clitoris remaining intact. Excision or Clitoridectomy: Removal of the clitoris and all or part of the labia minora. Intermediate: Removal of the clitoris, all or part of the labia minora, and sometimes part of the labia majora. Infibulation or Pharaonic: Removal of the clitoris, the labia minora and much of the labia majora. The remaining sides of the vulva are stitched together to close up the vagina, except for a small opening, which is preserved with slivers of wood or matchsticks”. Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1993, p. 367.) (4) Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Center: www.drmatlock.com (5) Dr. Helen O’Connell et al,”Anatomical Relationships between Urethra and Clitoris,” www.wwilkins.com/urology/0022-53476-98abs.html#page1892 (6) Op. cit. Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Center. (7) Op.cit. Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation Center. (8) Arnold Groh, Manual for the New Strategy against Female Genital Mutilation, p. 2. Based on the meetings of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva, July 26-30, 1999. (9) This loss of sensation is comparable to that documented for circumcised men, who often report diminished sexual sensation because of the loss of the foreskin, which is richly endowed with blood vessels and nerves. (10) http://www.drmatlock.com/laservaginal.html published in: “SexPolitik: Lust zwischen Restriktion und Subversion. Hrsg. Doris Guth und Elisabeth von Samsonov, vlg. Turia + Kant, Wien. 2001.

back

http://www.turbulence.org/Works/i-section/index.html interactive art

identity paper:

http://www.autonoomcentrum.nl/discussie/maintaining_the_borders.htm

cyborg gender issues links page:

http://feminism.eserver.org/gender/cyberspace/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_d’Aulnoy

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/daulnoy.html

http://www.peopleplayuk.org.uk/guided_tours/pantomime_tour/the_origins_of_pantomime_stories/cinderella.php

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=madame+d%27Aulnoy&fr=bt-portal&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8

Stelarc…reference from Mondays chat

http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/

http://neme.org/main/250/from-zombie-to-cyborg