How to speak, write other than through one’s body? Objective detachment, disinterest for the object of art, work, action is considered a requisite for meaning making, for understanding experience. Yet in fact, we remain in experience while we are becoming. Encountering images, we absorb them through the entire body, not only through the eyes. Incapable of objectivity, we experience images.
“Centralisation of imperial hegemonic power is frustrated by new production modes, self–imaging through new technologies, intermedia. However, a new type of power trickles through information networks, still driven by greed. This is why it’s so difficult to locate it, pin it down, make it concrete. It’s hiding just next to my playfulness, passion; actually it is my own subtly transformed desire. However, polarisation is unacceptable, experience is multilayered, complex.
The mainstream American pornography I watched while masturbating sprayed reality with the conditioning of sexual pleasure with aggressive penetration, domination, ejaculation over her breasts, over her face, with aggression, violence, her submission. Cannot zip–up your brain. It leaks into the real world.”
“It’s ghastly how most social interactions are bound with the awareness of one’s body and sexuality. The body is integrated into the world of images, the world of media.
My body and its parts are objects that I have to manage, repair, because they’re not good enough. I have to coat them, varnish them, polish, powder, paint them, always and continually make them younger to be closer to the fantasy, the frozen image that increasingly presents itself as reality. Mastering my body gave me the sensation of my power, my freedom. Stuffing, sucking, saliva, moisture, hairiness, oral pacification. What disgusts you, what gives you a sense of shame, where does pleasure come from? Do I follow the latest fashion trends, views, attention, approval? Do I listen to the little doll I carried as a girl when going to Baba Yaga to get light? What do I really want? How will I get it? Where’s the tiny key of the hidden room?”
“1,2,3 go!” Jane Fonda, Jenna Jameson, Carmen Electra, or Lady Gaga count. We are supposed to look hypersexualised, behave like hot pussies or tight, bloated stallions who enact their voluptuousness here and now, anywhere. It brings social points. Absurdly, the real, deep, true, liberated sexuality seems then to be even more remote. “4,3,2,1!” The disillusioned emancipation of a woman reduced to only one possible comparison, a struggle: be like a man? The idea of her emancipation, liberation, is embraced and corrupted into an imperative that forces her to be always and everywhere sexy - according to phallocentric criteria. Yet another example in the endless, all–pervading commodification. The abuse of power comes as no surprise.
Paradoxically, images of the hypersexualised female body block the very sexuality, transforming it into a series of projections and phantasms. One of the strategies of diversion is playing with the female image, with precisely this hypersexualised image, cross–dressing. Sadly, the image of this strategy, too, has already been commodified (H&M, skirts for men).
“Self–observation and self–imaging grins from two ends. Woman looks at herself in the mirror the way others look at her. Yet, we can look at the two of us together in the mirror, in the lens of a camera, the way we experience ourselves, in an existing reality. What baffles is the fact that a representation of such an experience, own experience, seems to be ‘not enough’ to tell anything more than what it is. What does it mean to others?”
WNDV/DIY is a production of self, production of one’s own images, own tools, own dances, music and noise, words and screams. It is not a lonesome romantic genius, but - besides own contents - also an active, politically incorrect remixing of the culture and media with which it is intertwined. Piracy is thus a rejected, redefined, or upgraded style. Makeself. Autoporn. Samizdat. Kopimi.
WNDV is about pleasure, about positioning in the world, about existence, about the body, about emotions, about living in a consumerist, pornographic world, about images, about exploitation of pleasure, about personal emancipation from fears, about existential problematics of how to be alive, how to live and stay alive - lust for life.
Kako govoriti, pisati drugače kot skozi svoje telo? Objektivna odmaknjenost, nezainteresiranost za umetniški objekt, delo, delovanje naj bi bila pogoj za ustvarjanje pomenov, za razumevanje izkušnje. A v resnici v izkušnji ostajamo, ko postajamo. Ko se srečujemo s podobami, jih vsrkamo skozi celo telo, ne le skozi oči. Nezmožni smo objektivnosti, podobe izkušamo.
"Centralizacijo imperialne hegemonske moči preprečujejo novi produkcijski načini, samoupodabljanje skozi nove tehnologije, intermedije, a skozi informacijske mreže prši drug tip moči, še vedno gnan s pohlepom. Ta je zato tako težje lociran, ulovljiv, konkretiziran. Skriva se čisto poleg moje igrivosti, strasti, pravzaprav je subtilno transformirana moja lastna želja. A polarizacija ni sprejemljiva, občutje je večplastno, kompleksno.
Ob mainstreamovski ameriški pornografiji, na katero sem masturbiral, je v realnost curljala pogojenost seksualnega užitka z agresivno penetracijo, dominacijo, izlivom na njene prsi, na njen obraz, z agresijo, nasiljem, njeno podrejenostjo. Cannot zip-up your brain. It leaks into the real world."
"Strašljiva je spetost večine socialnih interakcij z zavedanjem lastnega telesa in seksualnosti. Telo je integrirano v svet podob, v svet medijev.
Moje telo in njegovi deli so objekti, s katerimi moram upravljati, jih popravljati, ker niso dovolj dobri. Moram jih namazati, prelakirati, zgladiti, popudrati, porisati, pomladiti vedno in ves čas, da bom bližje fantaziji, zamrznjeni podobi, ki se vedno bolj predstavlja kot realnost. V obvladovanju svojega telesa sem začutila svojo moč, svojo svobodo. Prenajedanje, sesljanje, slina, vlažnost, dlakavost, oralna pacifikacija.
Kaj ti vzbuja gnus, sram in od kod prihaja užitek? Sledim zadnjim modnim trendom, pogledom, pozornosti, potrditvi? Poslušam svojo malo lutko, ki sem jo nosila kot deklica, ko sem šla k Jagi Babi po luč? Kaj v resnici hočem? In kako do tega pridem? Kje je mali ključ od skrite sobe?"
"1,2,3 go" mi šteje Jane Fonda, Jenna Jameson, Carmen Electra ali pa Lady Gaga. Hiperseksualizirani bi morali izgledati in se obnašati kot vroče muce ali napeti, nabreknjeni žrebci, ki udejanjajo svojo pohoto takoj in zdaj, kjerkoli. To prinaša socialne točke. Absurd je, da se zdi potem tista prava globoka resnična osvobojena seksualnost še bolj oddaljena. "4,3,2,1!" Razočarana emancipacija ženske speljana zgolj na edino možno primerljivost, bitko: biti kot moški? Pojem njene osamosvojitve, osvoboditve je zajet in sprevržen v imperativ, po katerem mora biti vedno in povsod seksi – po falocentričnih kriterijih. Le še en primer v neskončni komodifikaciji vsega. The abuse of power comes as no surprise.
Podobe hiperseksualiziranega ženskega telesa paradoksalno blokirajo prav samo seksualnost, jo transformirajo v serijo projekcij in fantazem. Ena od strategij preusmeritve je preigravanje ženskega lika, prav tega hiperseksualiziranega lika, preoblačenje, cross-dressing. Žalostno, podoba tudi te strategije je že komodificirana (H&M, skirts for men).
"Samoopazovanje in samoupodabljanje se reži z dveh koncev. Ženska se opazuje v ogledalu tako, kot jo opazujejo drugi. A hkrati se lahko gledava skupaj v ogledalu, v leči kamere, tako, kot se doživljava, v neki resničnosti, ki je. Bega dejstvo, da je prikazovanje te lastne izkušnje, doživljanja na videz 'premalo', da bi povedalo kaj več kot le to, kar je. Kakšen pomen ima za druge?"
WNDV/DIY je produkcija samih sebe, produkcija lastnih podob, lastnih orodij, svojih plesov, glasbe in hrupa, besed in krikov. Ni osamljena romantična genialnost, temveč poleg lastnih vsebin tudi aktivno, politično nekorektno remiksanje kulture in medijev, s katerimi je prepletena. Piratstvo je zato zavrnjeni, redefinirani ali nadgrajeni slog. Makeself. Autoporn. Samizdat. Kopimi.
WNDV o užitku, o pozicioniranju v svetu, o bivanju, o telesu, o čustvenosti, o bivanju v potrošniškem, pornografskem svetu, o podobah, o izkoriščanju užitka, o osebni emancipaciji od strahov, bivanjski problematiki, kako biti živ, kako živeti in ostati živ – lust for life.