Existrans

October 23rd is the Existrans march in Paris, meeting at Métro Barbés/Hotel de Ville at 14h.

Parisang

A first instalment from France, loosely based on comedy stereotypes and national identity questions. It’s currently super badly photoshopped (I can’t quite get my head around the program yet), so I’ll fix it when I can get some help from the better qualified. It’s a late update too, I think the actual date of the picture is something like the 2nd or 3rd of September.

their power, our resistence

i’ve been thinking about the tastefulness of blood lately. this has two reasons.

first reason follows on from the previous post, about the “menstrual machine” that simulates the pain and blood of a period for those who don’t experience this biologically. even though I like this idea, and as i said, i find it rather beautiful, this is also a problem. it is so tasteful. tastefully and discreetly presented, sexy design, a cyborg lack of human dirt and discharge. maybe it’s a european thing to want it real.

my period this month was very real, late and thick and brownish. it didn’t inspire me so i didn’t take a picture this month. a kind of self cencorship that i’m quite upset about now in hindsight. i had a chance after sex last week. the person i was with concluded the session with something like “just the way i like it, anal sex and blood everywhere”. i should of course have taken a picture. tasteful or not, it would have been real.

this leads me onto the second point, which i have touched upon previously as well, in self-portraiture: the responsibility of representation. I haven’t thought about this in any real depth but it concerns a second way in which blood can be percieved as distasteful – when it is connected to violence. as i failed at taking a picture this month, i give you an old one, from may of last year. in a time when everyone is obsessing about vampires, and me too a little bit, this fits well. but out of context, i think this can be seen as quite a violent picture that has symbolism that i was not conscious of when i took it, religious, abusive, sacrificial. deeply entrenched cultural images.

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for me there is an eroticism and beauty in crossing the skin border, mixing the inside and the outside of the body. some people do this to a much much greater (sexual or otherwise) extent than i am prepared to right now but there is an incredible power in starting to discover this. there is a trust and submissive vulnerability, but also a dominant force, in both giving and receiving someone else’s insides, and i’m talking about consensual/blood now. in the picture is my blood and what it really portrays is autoeroticism. i think that there is always a certain amount of violence inherent in the pleasure of being penetrable, leaking and open.

as i think the theme of both violence and distastefulness goes through many of our pictures, not to mention other queer and feminist artists’ work, i borrow the title for this post from this year’s anarchopride in stockholm. the theme is “their power, our resistance” which i think sums up my thoughts perfectly. their borders, their tastefulness, our stains, our pleasure.

johanna

July and its effects.

There’s been a wee bit of a bloodbath in my freezer this year, in a very contained way of course, but as I’m moving to Paris next week I decided to defrost and use up my stash as a goodbye to Brighton for now.

Thus ensued a little temporary defacing of the lovely porous white cliffs at Birling Gap. There’s a picture of the bottle and its not very extensive contents, and a b-side for this month. These photographs were nearly killed forever by inefficient technology, so I’m pretty damn pleased that they made it this far.

Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to do some shameless self-promotion of my new art blog, (sub)liminal, a transition photoproject. Check it out here.

But, before you do that, here is July’s b-side, or one of, that done a little bit in public and required a little bit of assisstance.

Little Plastic Castle

So, here’s another b-side. I seem to have had two periods in May, so here is May installment number two (although, taken two days before June, so consider it June if you wish).

Also, it’s kind of an Ani DiFranco tribute:

“They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time
And it’s hard to say if they’re happy
But they don’t seem much to mind”

- © Ani DiFranco, from Little Plastic Castle (1998)

Remember, it’s a b-side. In reality, I might have killed the fish.

Aqueously,

Anna x

body art (animals)

 

b-side of june 2010

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inspiration

apart from real bodies, physical presence, sensation and pressure, the balance between exquisite beauty and disharmony inspire me. i thought i’d show you some of the artists that i find tread this fine line between overbearing corporeality and the purely asthetic.

print artist John Simpson makes prints to die for, mythical scenes that give me antler-jealousy.

in berlin last week, i saw the exhibition Double Sexus with works by Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois. the exhibition catalogue says “bodies morph and dissolve, limbs go missing, while others multiply; male and female sexual forms merge into each other and give birth to androgynous beings.” i found Bellmer’s drawings captivating.

they reminded me of the newley rediscovered drawings of Egon Schiele, angular, wrong, realistic. see another drawing and one of his many self-portrait.

the real contribution of june 2010 can be seen on the explicit page.

johanna

B-sides, more of

So, after a short silence from me I thought I’d upload some more b-sides. Despite encouragement to put up some of my rejected November pictures in which I accidentally display my vagina, I think I’ll leave you with these slightly more discreet shots and save my vagina for another day.

Some more b-sides

Some of Anna’s b-sides below:

9 months of labour

A few of Johanna’s b-sides since April 2009.