mini update #4: marilyn, james, Scavengers and the DeVine.

nyx mathews and jo latham, flutesong pink (#2), digital photograph, 13.5x19cm, 2010.

the past two weeks have been insane. first i sold two photographs at a group exhibition, then i went to the training day for my shiny new job as a collumnist for DeVine , and then i got 1 and a 1/2 (ie, one article and an interview) articles published on The Scavenger. kinda super, super exciting.

My very first DeVine article can be found right here; it’s a feature piece about the ableist politics of (so-called) ‘environmentally sound’ eating habits, and the fine line between self-care and sustainable practices for people who live with a disability. and it was originally called ‘food is an ableist issue’, which of course i like better, but, you know, editors change that stuff all the time.

kristin baer as pamela swynford de beaufort and deborah ann woll as jessica hamby, film still, true blood, season 3, 2010.

the Scavenger article was a lot of fun, mostly because it’s on vampires, and i’m on a huge vampire pop-fiction kick at the moment. it’s pretty awesome when you get to publish writing that’s just stuff you’ve been ranting about anyway; in this case, the kickass female vampires who’ve recently popped up in mainstream television. my favourite is true blood‘s pam (as pictured above), but vampire diaries‘ katherine is pretty fantastic in her own right, and twilight‘s alice cullen also got a mention. i wanted to write about eli from let the right one in, too, but i might save her for another time. anyway, you can find the article here.

the interview i did with max attitude, on aesthetics and politics – and the politics of aesthetics – in femme and trans contexts. it’s only a segment of a much longer conversation we’re still having (it being a pretty huge subject and all). it’s fascinating because we come at things from such different directions; i am, really, an aesthetic theorist above and beyond all else. even my feminism is viewed through that lens rather than the other way around. aesthetics are, i think, possibly the most effective way to trace political history. whatever was going on, regardless of whether it was written down or talked about (or allowed to be written down or talked about) somewhere, somehow, it came out in art. but that’s a different article. this one’s about more literal, physical implications of politically astute aesthetic desires. i really do think it’s worth taking a look at, even if they’re not subjects you already know about.

paul gassenheimer, flutesong red, (marilyn munroe and james dean).

 

and somewhere in between all that jo latham and i did a photoshoot (that’s one of the pictures from it, up top) based on the above image of marilyn munroe and james dean, to go with the interview…

and raskolnikov was super cute. right now he’s sitting on my lap, mostly asleep, but for the purring. best hotwater-bottle ever.

photographic roundup: miu miu, lady gaga, vanity fair, and a reader request

 today i have a bit of a reader request.  the idea is this: that those who see this post leave a beautiful picture (or collection thereof!) of their own in the comments, or a link to a picture roundup of their own.

shoes by miu miu, source unknown, via shoelust

without a doubt i spend most of my time on the internet looking for beautiful, fascinating, or inspiring images.  in fact i find so many each week that i’ve decided, instead of posting willy-nilly, to pull together my favourites every friday and post a weekly ‘photographic roundup’.  images are pretty much the reason i started using the internet.  i have thousands on my computer, and i organise them more obsessively than i do anything else in my life.  i’m not sure whether it’s the art history background or my own special brand of crazy, but i get terribly upset when i can’t figure out who made an image, where i sourced it from originally, etc., etc..  i have so many fantastic visual pieces on my computer that it seems a shame to let them just gather digital dust.  i feel like they should go back out into netspace for others to look and wonder at.

in the same vein i would love to see what other poeple have stumbled over and wondered at this week, and to create in the comments a sort of digital exquisite corpse.  the beautiful thing about this is that everybody wanders the net differently, seeks out different things, uses different searchwords; i’m fascinated by the bredth possible in an image collection put together by different people and the things they find lovely. 

   

still from alejandro, by lady gaga and steven klein, 2010, via fatshionista 

(i love this photograph.  it is, incidentally, not a photograph at all, but rather a still from lady gaga’s video for alejandro, depicting the artist with one of the actor/dancers in the clip.  it’s such a fantastic image, though.  this incredibly intimate pose, but with assigned gender-roles thoroughly reversed.  i know people make a fuss about the fact that the men in this clip wear heels a lot, but (as i will likely get around to exploring further in another article) i don’t think clothes actually count for that much subversion on their own.  it’s the body language that makes this subversive, not the garments; the publicisation, in a popular forum, of a queer reimagining of nominally heterosexual sex.  plus it’s just beautiful.  i don’t find much of klein’s work particularly engaging, but i have to admit, i love this video.  and i think the madonna comparisons really fail to take into account such blatently queer moments as this.  fatshionista, by the by, has quite an interesting comparison between alejandro and madonna’s express yourself on her blog.)  

 

naomi watts for vanity fair italy, may 2010, via outsapop 

so – any lovely pictures to add?

beautiful and terrible: one pretty film, one awesome blog, one offensive blog post.

so to begin with, this may be one of my favourite commercial/cinematic dance sequences to date.  it’s from rob marshal’s nine, a film which is utterly sexist, but graced by stunning visuals, beautiful costumes, some gorgeous dance and song sequences, and judi dench playing a charming costumier (this last alone would have added significant points, but combined with the others…well, it was worth watching once, at least).  this clip features fergie (yes, of dubious black eyed peas fame), and though she and the other dancers seem to have gotten the bottom of the barrel, costume wise (look up marion cotillard’s wardrobe, for example, and you’ll see what i mean), the choreography is gorgeous.  i love tactile dance pieces, though they don’t come along terribly often; the percussive element alone is great (though a little more common – think of stomp, or tap dogs), but the use of sand is better.  sound obscure?  you really ought to watch the clip.

still from nine, directed and produced by Rob Marshall, 2009.

i also discovered, today, a pretty fantastic blog.  it’s called the seventeen magazine project and, as implied, it’s about, well, seventeen magazine (which is, for those neither in the know – good for you – or inclined to look it up – why would you bother? – one of those awful glossy rag-mags aimed at mutilating the aesthetic sensibilities, self-worth, and world view of teenaged girls).  the seventeen magazine project…’embraces’ all this.  it is the undertaking of one pennsylvanian highschool student to live, for an entire month, by the precepts of the june/july issue of seventeen.  by following this doctrine she hopes to ‘shed some light on the modern teenage experience’.  it’s pretty hilarious.  or at least, i enjoyed reading it.  it even includes pie-charts on, say, the number of current male ‘heart-throbs’ (does that really have a hyphon?  is it one word?  do i ditch the second ‘t’?) with some kind of vampire affiliation (for the record, that’s most of them).

still from nine, directed and produced by Rob Marshall, 2009 (because i refuse to post a picture of a seventeen cover instead).

less impressive by far is this post.  to begin with i feel compelled to state the obvious: ‘ftm’ and ‘butch’ are not synonymous.  they are two separate identities.  in some people they do coexist; in some they are melded together to form a complex whole.  but not all those who are ftm are butch, and not all who are butch are ftm.  to assume that ftm and butch are always part of the same continuum (a continuum in which, it is inferred, butch is, shall we say, a ‘softer’ version) is to violently undermine, and do great disservice to, both.  for a start, it creates a hierarchy (already present, in myriad forms, in both the lesbian and trans communities, but something i think we should be actively fighting, rather than perpetuating or condoning), whereby a female-to-male trans identity is superior to that of lesbian butch, and more than that, is perceived as some kind of ‘end point’ for all female-bodied people with more masculine identities. 

it also assumes that all ftm persons are inherently ‘masculine,’ which entirely disavows a capacity for personal gender identity, and – more importantly, i think – merely reaffirms the idea that our biological bodies (even if we alter them) must match our actions.  in other words, sex and gender must correlate.  boy bodies must coincide with boy behaviours, female bodies with male identities must enact masculine traits.  i take serious issue with this.  i also think it is, on any genuine, considered queer theoretical inspection, ridiculous.

in addition to these points, the article utterly negates the ways in which these identities, and elements of them, are constantly evolving, melding, breaking and reforming in communities and individuals, a process which allows men to be femme, trans persons to be genderqueer, femmes to be masculine, etc..  when you place identities on a sliding scale, instead of appreciating each as having the potential to be a new and disparate concept of its own, you not only bind them together in inescapable hierarchy; you disallow the wonder of interference, cross-pollination, blending; not only in individuals, but in whole subcultures, and the theoretical realms they so often spawn.

beautiful things: rohan anderson

because i am a sucker for pretty, pretty things…(most especially if they’re red)

…the work of australian photographer rohan anderson naturally appeals to me.

this is not the most cheerful post (and it has a trigger warning)

in fact this article has many trigger-warnings.  it involves rape, rapists, rape-methodology, and rape-supportive culture.  however.  it involves these things because it is a discussion of some new – pretty revolutionary – research being done on the topic of undetected, unincarcerated rapists.  if you can handle the triggers, it’s well worth reading.  not least because it doesn’t leave you with the same sick inevitable feeling one tends to get reading pretty much everything people write about rape.  in fact…this article actually finishes with some pretty awesome points on how undetected rape could be combatted in a very every-day manner (and again, this is sort of revolutionary; if only because this is rape we’re talking about, and we’re doing so in a culture which supports it, so communicating Things That Can Be Done To Change This is a pretty big deal).

so again.  if you can…you should read this.  it’s interesting.  and more than that, it’s not only relevant, it’s positive and maybe even helpful:

predator theory.

wonder of wonders.