Helium Bodies

We walked toward the sky
When our only desire was to dig our toes in the dirt
We sought stability
But our flags caught the wind
Carried us away with dreams of unslanted grounds

We wore our banners like capes
Covered in every color but white
Flew overhead so that we could see the city grid
And wondered why gravity couldn't pull us down

Made it!

www.thetransitionproject.weebly.com

The opposite of standing still is...crawling?

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/state_eases_rules_on_changing.html

While it is an improvement, there are, of course, still some problems with this new policy. I guess we should just embrace that change is indeed occurring.

Next up: not needing a note from a doctor saying you are "in the process of gender transition"!
And then maybe deleting sex from the passport altogether. It serves no purpose.

Love Love Love

The Burial Series #7 (The Spirit Medium)

Beautiful!

Saw this on someone's blog and fell in love!

Some sketches

Hmmmm.....

I just found out about this show... It's exciting but I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. However, the website does have some very useful and informative links, which is a huge plus!

http://www.vh1.com/shows/transform_me/series.jhtml

FYI

Dear Tyra Banks,

If someone is a transgender woman and blatantly states that she identifies as female and always has, you do not ask her boyfriend if he considers himself gay or bisexual.

-David Gutierrez

"Ain't I a Woman?"

We are the soldiers of discourse

We ran when no one was chasing us
Looked for things that didn't exist
We punched through walls
And leaped over fences

We bound different parts of our bodies
Hid things that didn't belong
We humored ourselves with thoughts of being whole
Because we knew something could be done

We disguised our fear as strength
And marched through the desert in jungle camouflage

"Introduction Spirit possession and gender" from Spirit Possession Modernity and Power in Africa

The relation of spirit possession and gender formed an important subject in the theoretical discussion of spirit possession cults. That the great majority of the possessed were and are women (although in the last years the numbers of men have increased) caused anthropologists to ask for explanations. In addition, feminists recently discovered that spirit possession was used by women not only to challenge and appropriate male power, but also to confirm and subvert gender categories. Spirit possession dealt with the resistance and empowerment of women and other marginalized groups, but also with the dislocation of gender categories thus denaturalizing male hegemonies through spirit possession. It allowed alternative models of agency which displaced the hegemonic association of masculinity and femininity (Cornwall 1994: 116)

In many regions in Africa, spirits are gendered. In forming hierarchies, they often replicate the inequalities between women and men. However, spirits of various pantheons often establish their masculinity or femininity as fluid rather than fixed, offering gender as a continuum of qualities found in both females and males. Thus, male spirits in the Brazilian Candomblé, for instance, are associated as much with emotion and softness as with forceful dominance, while female spirits include images of the fierce and the powerful, as well as the sensuous and gentle (Cornwall 1994: 126).

In the contribution of Jean-Paul Colleyn on the Nya Cult in Mali only men are possessed by an androgynous divinity named Nya who according to the context is referred to as ‘she’ or ‘he’ thus oscillating between the two sexes. Members are married to Nya and call him or her ‘my husband’ while becoming his or her wife. Thus, as in many other regions in Africa, the gender of the possessed is also dislocated. Initiation, continuous contact and incorporation of the spirits through marriage may alter or shift the medium’s gender. In Northern Uganda, for instance, the relationship between spirits and their mediums was seen as a marital and sexual relationship, the spirit being the medium’s spouse. As such, male spirits were said to feminize male spirit mediums while emasculating female spirit mediums. In contrast, among the Lugbara permanent or temporary asexuality was an essential characteristic of spirit mediums enabling them to mediate between the human and the spirit spheres (Middleton 1969: 224); while in Lamu on the Swahili coast the gender of women and men married to Jinn spirits was not changed at all. Men would marry female jin and women would marry male jin (El-Zein 1974: 71ff). Perhaps because these unions were thought to be fertile and to produce spirit children they did not shift the heterosexual matrix.

In many regions, male and female spirit mediums own spirits of their own and of the opposite sex. In one session, various spirits of different sexes may enter the medium and provide alternate versions of gender, thus displacing the dominant gender hierarchies. In the selective recombination of gendered traits, the person possessed by spirits is given the chance to play, to present a range of choices and alternatives within which people can locate themselves (Cornwall 1994: 127). Thus, spirit possession can be a stage for enacting tragedies, comedies, travesties and parodies of gender that are constantly recreated and dislodged.

This highly flexible aspect of spirit possession is worked out in Susan Kenyon’s chapter on Zar spirits in Central Sudan. In her careful case study of a butcher’s wife possessed by various male and female Zar spirits she offers insight into the contradictions and complexities of ideas about women’s multiple-gendered identities, about autonomy and power in relation to possession by spirits.

In addition, in her discussion of possession in Madagascar, Lesley Sharp gives the example of female royal Tromba spirit mediums that undermines the dominant assumptions in anthropology that participation in what are often assumed to be marginal cult activities is generally regarded as proof of the structural weakness of women. Instead, she shows that among the Bemazava, women embody local power in the political arena that enables them, for instance, to make substantial decisions on local development projects.

In Alexandra de Sousa’s chapter on spirit possession on the Bijagós Islands the bodies of women serve as vessels to accomplish the initiation of young men into full ancestors. The spirits of these young men who because of their premature death could not accomplish their initiation into full personhood take possession of women. The possessed women undergo an initiation and thus establish and fulfill not only their own personhood but also the one of the spirit they embody. Thus, female initiation is in fact a post-mortem male initiation. While in everyday life women’s bodies become the location of a future child, during initiation they harbor the spirit of a defunct who died too early. Pregnant women are not allowed to undergo initiation because it is impossible to carry at the same time a foetus and a defunct.

Here possession surely is not sex war. On the contrary, it is concerned with the social reproduction of the community, women’s bodies not only producing babies but also ancestors. During the time of initiation women change into warriors, the age group of the young men they have incorporated. While being pregnant with a defunct they display the virile qualities of warriors thus relating to the longstanding warrior tradition of the Bijagós Islands. By doing so they dislocate the dominant gender norms while at the same time confirming their productive power of women’s bodies.

As in other African regions, the self, the body and the person are not unitary concepts but open to a constant reformulation through mutable entanglements with others. In this context, spirit possession could be seen as one of many practices that inscribe dividuality (Strathern 1988; Battaglia 1995:3).

Michael Jackson within a transgender discourse. LOVELY!

Randomly came across this very interesting analysis of Michael Jackson's work focusing on his vocal stylings in Off the Wall. Thank you Francesca Royster for a lovely read!
http://nsrc.sfsu.edu/article/michael_jackson_transgendered_erotics_voice

Some late-night sketching

So last night I decided to sketch again, but to sketch from my own work rather than using other sources. Looking at all of my old photos I was reminded of all the work I had done revolving around hooded figures. There was a need to place a fabric around someone's face in order to represent a power dynamic, an unidentified person, and/or suggested violence. I became intrigued again by the hood, but this time it was the isolated head that became a powerful image...in my mind. The hooded imagery inspires a sense of ambivalence and actively poses questions when the viewer is not given any context. I most likely will not pursue these drawings, but it was refreshing to explore something fairly separate from what I have been invested in, although there are many moments of overlap. Who knows it might come up again!

Chinatown, thank you for not disappointing me.

Chung King Rd. is more like an old wooden roller coaster. There is a constant creaking fear of what you will be seeing in the next gallery. Overall, you get a fairly uneventful and disappointing experience, a sort of "Eh, I just came on the ride to see what all the fuss was about". However, you do get to experience the much anticipated excitement while you're at the top of the hills. The names of these peaks are Robert Mallary, Kathrin Burmester, and Travis Somerville.

Robert Mallary's sculptures are quite exciting, especially his more figurative work. His mid-century pieces create a strong visceral experience that straddle the line between the grotesque and the beautiful, reminiscent of Louise Bourgeois's work.

Crucifix, 1962

The Cliffhangers, 1963-4

Nosedive, 1962

Ballerina, 1960

Kathrin Burmester's large-scale, pixelated digital prints of baseboards were a very pleasant inclusion in the Jancar Gallery. Her utilization of photography is quite smart and places the work in the context of painting, the abstract, and the banal, among other intriguing discourses.

White over Blue, Red, Yellow, Green and White on Blue (Baseboard), 2010

White over Brown over Spirals (Baseboard), 2010

Beige and Beige over Brown (Baseboard), 2010

Travis Somerville explicitly deals with race relations throughout the nation's history. Because of the time-specific imagery appropriated in his mixed media collages, he confronts the viewer with seemingly antiquated images and forces the viewer to consider them in the context of the contemporary moment. This work was by far the most powerful and most politically charged of the work exhibited on Chung King Rd., especially considering the recent events at UCSD.

Unfortunately there aren't many images of his work on the net...

The internet is wonderful!

It's not quite the same as going to a good library and picking up random books to look through. You don't get the smell or the different textures of covers and pages in your hands. The physicality of discovery is absent, however, your eyes can still be in for a treat. The pro of surfing the web is that you can quickly jump from link to link and discover something new and exciting.

Alex Kanevsky

Currently looking at...

George Platt Lynes
So many wonderful images, yet there are very few on the internet. So, this is the best image I could find without going through the trouble of scanning and uploading.

Shadow Puppets

We danced along your side
Lying where you walked
Sleeping where you ran

Waiting for the moment
You became the silhouettes
While we flickered and pulsated
To the rhythm of your hearts

Now the light is gone
And we lie as one
Until the lightning separates us.

Passages passing the ages

Three lovely exerpts from Plato's Symposium.

"There is dishonor in yielding to the base, or in a base manner; but there is honor in yielding to the good, or in an honorable manner. Base is that vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing that is in itself unstable..."

"The sexes were three in number, not, as they are now, two, male and female; there was also a third the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word 'androgynous' is preserved only as a term of reproach."

"He [Love] is of flexile form; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way undiscovered into and out of every soul of man."

Before I forget

Likely to be an impossible project:

Get people to take a snapshot of an object/view of concentration or unconscious stare directly before and after a gender reassignment (or related) surgery. I would then translate those photographs into small (11x14) drawings or paintings. The final pieces would be diptychs, or possibly triptychs including the patient's self-portrait.

(This was a very quick thought. Still working on it, even though it probably will never be executed.)