Buck Angel, man with a pussy

(…) It started 18 years ago. I saw a documentary about a transsexual and it was like an epiphany. I knew it was going to save my life. I had to do everything on my own. There wasn’t even the internet when I was going through it. I had to go to bookshops and look for books on transsexuals. Finding a doctor, that was difficult, but I found a doctor in LA. He was such a sweetheart. He started shooting me with testosterone. I was very nervous about it, so worried about what I was going to look like, but I knew that without it I was going to commit suicide. I saw immediate changes. In one month I lost my period. The hair took a while but I started building muscle quickly. I went to ten different doctors about my breasts. That cost me a lot of money, but I got two jobs to pay for it. I eventually found a doctor who did, not a mastectomy, but a gynecomastia. I can’t tell you how pleased I am about my chest. Now I take testosterone every week. In Mexico it’s a lot cheaper and I can get it over the counter. I’ll inject it once a week for the rest of my life.

(…) I just wanted to make adult work because there was no one like me in that world. I never thought I was going to be an activist. I was never confident with my genitals but now I can embrace that part of my body that I hated for so long. And I want to share that with people. Not just people with issues with their genitals. My goal is to help make the world a better place for all of us. This hatred that is out there is very scary and I think that it is because people do not know how to deal when they see something different. Because we grow up being told this is how society is, when something does not fit that idea people freak out.

http://dirty-mag.com/03/ent_buck.html

Francis Picabia

Entr’acte (René Clair, 1924)

Chupar el ser

To fall in love, tomber amoureux, decía Derrida: caer en una topografía precisa, acceder por desprendimiento o por desplome hasta un estrato particular del ser, del cuerpo, de la ciudad, del planeta, de la evolución, de la especie. Es allí donde sucede la conversión de escalas: amor del ser, amor carnal, amor urbano, amor terrestre, amor geológico, amor animal, amor inter-especies. No hay que pensar aquí en un rictus heideggeriano, de ninguna manera. Estoy hablando de una arquitectura. No de una revelación o de un desvelamiento del ser a través de una iluminación precisa, ni de la puesta de la realidad bajo la claridad de un foco. No estoy hablando de eso. Estoy hablando de una percepción táctil que sucede en lo oscuro, de tocar el fondo forzosamente con el vientre, arrastrándose sobre una masa viscosa. No hay iluminación sino oscuro palpamiento.  Estoy hablando de descubrir la superficie de una interioridad con la piel. Se trata de un retorno a la vida ciberreptiliana, al mismo tiempo una regresión y una forma de paladear a lametazos la verdad eléctricamente viscosa del ser. Todavía no a bocanadas, porque todavía no estamos en el estado en el que el ser nos es dado en forma etérea. No nos queda más remedio que chupar el ser.

Beatriz Preciado, Testo yonqui, 2008.

Cezary Bodzianowski – Rainbow, Bathroom, Lodz (1995)

Gilbert and George (shitty world)

The Naked Shit Pictures (1994–5), The Fundamental Pictures  (1996) and The Rudimentary Pictures (1999) engage with the norms of masculinity while visually accommodating the uncanny presence of the abject with the artists’ bodies. They can also be considered further, even symptomatized, as a post-AIDS response to the contemporary trouble with sex, sexuality, body, death and risk. Por Cüneyt Çakirlar, en Masculinity, Scatology, Mooning and the Queer/able Art of Gilbert & George: On the Visual Discourse of Male Ejaculation and Anal Penetration,  (Paragraph, 2011).

Shitted, 1983

Bum holes, 1994

The visual co-existence of any combination of the anal (shit), the penile (piss, spunk) and the oral (spit) challenges further the masculine rigidity of ‘I’, which provokes what Calvin Thomas calls ‘male anxiety’ and catalyses the queer affinities of the imagery. (Cüneyt Çakirlar, íd)

World, 1994

Shitty world, 1994

Flying Shit, 1994

Shitty, 1994

Naked, 1994

Blood on shit, 1996

Spunk, blood, piss, shit, spit, 1996

Our spunk, 1997

Bio-poder

Las disciplinas del cuerpo y las regulaciones de la población constituyen los dos polos alrededor de los cuales se desarrolló la organización del poder sobre la vida. El establecimiento, durante la edad clásica, de esa gran tecnología de doble faz -anatómica y biológica, individualizante y especificante, vuelta hacia las realizaciones del cuerpo y atenta a los procesos de la vida- caracteriza un poder cuya más alta función desde entonces no es ya quizá la de matar sino la de invadir la vida enteramente.

La vieja potencia de la muerte, en la cual se simboliza el poder soberano, se halla ahora cuidadosamente recubierta por la administración de los cuerpos y la gestión calculadora de la vida. Desarrollo rápido durante la edad clásica de diversas disciplinas -escuelas, colegios, cuarteles, talleres; aparición también, de los problemas de natalidad, longevidad, salud pública, vivienda, migración; explosión, pues, de técnicas diversas y numerosas para obtener la sujeción de los cuerpos y el control de las poblaciones-. Se inicia así la era de un «bio-poder».

Michel Foucault,  Historia de la sexualidad, vol. 1: La voluntad de saber, 1976.

Tricia Lawless Murray

(Imágenes retiradas por petición de la autora)

La fotógrafa californiana Tricia Lawless Murray presenta una obra que -con el cuerpo femenino como objeto- muestra con descarnada sinceridad los estragos físicos provocados por el placer, el deseo y el dolor.

Lawless confronta al espectador con los resultados de prácticas cercanas al masoquismo, como el spanking, ofreciendo un muestrario físico, trasero, colateral y fragmentario del dolor como corolario del placer. Sus fotografías documentan los estragos corporales con la neutralidad de un investigador o la asepsia de un informe forense, conformando una colección de anónimos culos tumefactos, de caprichosas formas violetas que se dibujan caprichosas sobre la piel doliente.

En tiempos de corrección política, el flirteo o la autoexploración con las formas del deseo y en concreto con las marcas de la violencia sexual resultan controvertidamente refrescante.

(All images removed at author’ s request)

The majority of the work is based on real life experiences that occurred in times of play, where the purpose was to explore desires and fantasies, but when you have baggage these releases become as much about pain as they do with pleasure. I don’t feel that expressing and experiencing pain is a bad thing, in fact, I think it is really healthy. When I delve into these past memories in these moments of play, the feelings that are released can be processed in a different way where reparations can be made. I’m not intentionally going out to reconstruct past memories. These experiences are drawn from me pursuing personal fantasy and my sense of what I desire, and sometimes that is rooted in memories from the past. I don’t know that any of us can escape our past and how it conditions and control us. Entrevista con Tricia Lawless en One Giant Arm.

The works put together begins to tell the story of dejected relations wrought upon the bodies of those pictured in the images. The nature of sexuality is that its boundaries are often very messy and undefined and that titillation is derived from transgressing these murky private spaces, both physical and mental. Pictured here are some representations of lonely or aggressive moments that form a broken narrative that speaks to elements of how I desire and how I want to be desired.

Julien D’Abrigeon – Dit&Geste (2000)

Hemos capturado algunas pantallas del ciberpoema «Dit&Geste» y recomendamos la experiencia de este juego de palabras e intestinos yuxtapuestos.

Larry Sultan (The Valley, 1999-2002)

El fotógrafo Larry Sultan (1946-2009) agrupa en la serie The Valley un conjunto de fotografías realizadas en torno al Valle de San Fernando, en Los Ángeles. Además de ser un típico suburbio angelino, el Valle es conocido por dar cobijo a la industria californiana del porno. Pero las productoras pornográficas no se limitan a instalar sus sedes y oficinas en San Fernando, sino que también usa y alquila las casas del suburbio como plató para sus películas y rodajes.

West Valley Studio #3, 1998

Compuesto de cincuenta y tres fotografías a color de gran formato tomadas desde 1999, The Valley compendia muchos de los temas presentes en los anteriores proyectos de Larry Sultan, como Pictures from home, que ya era una investigación fotográfica sobre el significado de la casa, el hogar y la familia. Junto a ello The Valley analiza porqué el ideal de domesticidad de las clases medias se presta a ser tomado como set de rodaje para películas pornográficas. La serie también incide sobre uno de los motivos de investigación más populares para los artistas contemporáneos: la noción de ‘verdad fotográfica’. Resource Library Magazine.

Tasha’s third film, 1998

Although they are nominally about adult films, Sultan’s pictures are also interrogations of the photographic medium itself. He shows how photography can create the illusion of fantasy, and then he uses his pictures to dismantle those same fictions. Lush backyards are exposed as mere painted backdrops; even the beautiful, sexually uninhibited porn stars seem less exotic and more familiar when seen between takes, waiting for makeup or instructions from the director-especially when Sultan catches the actors in moments of contemplation, boredom, and fatigue.

By showing us the places where illusion falls apart, Sultan also calls our attention to the act of looking. A reflection on a sliding glass door, a sofa standing between us and the actors, or a strategically placed vase are all reminders of our status as onlookers, or interlopers. In some cases these obstacles almost completely obscure the scene. Unlike pornography, which is designed to be immediate and uncomplicated, Sultan’s images are complex. Sometimes humorous, sometimes erotic, they reward close examination.Corey Keller, Assistant Curator of Photography, San Francisco MoMA.

Boxers, Mission Hills, 1999

Sultan’s pictures present a documentary portrait of the industry, in which he steps back from the “action” to include the lights, cables and crews that frame it. Many pictures chronicle the bored hours spent by cast and crew members, just off set, waiting for their cue.  Some capture porn stars in their curlers, or simply in sweats without make-up. Clark Buckner en Stretcher.

Topanga Skyline Drive #1, 1999

Woman in garden, Mission Hills, 1999

Cabana, 2000

Backyard, Reseda, 2001

Den, Santa Clarita, 2002

Pool, Calabasas, 2002

Backyard, Woodland Hills, 2002

The Valley series

The Valley series

The Valley series

Mike Kelly – Nostalgic Depiction of the Innocence of Childhood (1990)