The boundaries of reality are the area of play…

I got this in the mail last week from Better World Inc., the other half of our collective of two named “Etranges Etrangers.” By the way, he is in my opinion the most cutting-edge French photographer living in Copenhagen. I’ve been trying to persuade him to move to Paris, but ok I’ll stop digressing…

Better World explained to me that they are images taken from erotic magazines in the 60’s, although I am very sceptical - some of these images are as erotic as medical records of mutilated genitalia…

I have not been very active on the blogging front, as I have been mainly doing research, script writing, and quite a bit of journaling to clarify directions I want to take next season.

The female genitalia project has taken off and I’ve been receiving more responses than I could possibly reply to individually. I do try when I feel it elicits a reaction from my part. I’m a bit amused that most of these tend to be private, either via private msg in MySpace or e-mail, and am definitely touched when I see that there’s a confessional element, a therapeutic process that is taking place. Some of these msgs are 5 or 6 pages long, and I think I’m going to post them anonymously somewhere here.

This and the overwhelming response that I received from the models have brought me to the decision to post a series of theorical texts on the female genitalia, starting from excerpts from my thesis. I think the logical place to start would be the beginning of photography in the nineteenth century, Over time, I’d like to compile the largest online resource available on the subject.

I was interviewed by Gildas from www.chictype.fr yesterday. For those who don’t know, it’s a Parisian Bobo (bougeois-bohème) website on fashion, culture, and dandysm. I think the video will come out next week and you will see me in all my 70’s geekgirl glory. There’s something about dandysm that’s so intellectually sexy that I even forget my feminist stance against the blatantly misogynistic aspects of it. I mean Baudelaire was such a woman hater, yet such an intellectual turn-on (no, no him, his ideas). At this day and age, finding great mental fucks is infinitely more challenging than finding fulfilling/satisfying sex.

Conversation inevitably turned to Lacan, his famous claim that the female sex organ is an emptiness to be filled, the drawing that he asked André Masson to make as a wooden sliding door for the famous painting “Origine du monde” by Gustave Courbet, and numerous (un)ethical practices including the stealing of Georges Batailles’ wife via analysis. Other discussions that were completely off-camera and off the record included pedophilia as the one label that prevents all meaningful dialogue and discussion on the sexuality of children, all in the name of”protection”. This is a subject that can get me ranting to no end, much like “patriotism” in the context of Iraq and 9/11, or “freedom of choice” in the context of health care reforms in the US. So I think I’ll stop spilling and start my day.

Currently reading:

The Unknowable Gurdjieff (Arkana)
By: Margaret Anderson
Release date: 06 August, 1991

Women In Antiquities
By: Charles Seltman
Release date: 1956

&

Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas By: Paul Wood Release date: 01 October, 2002

 

CLICK TO VIEW PORTFOLIO
Chin-Chin Wu © 2006-2008

The exhibition contains 15 life-size photographs, sound files audible through headphones, one cabinet de curiosités, experimental videos, and the making-of film.

 

/le film 0307 avec ST1.flv

Making of - Femmes: Portraits Dé/Visagés

Camera: Linda

Editing: Jean-Marc Sanchez

 

Musician, psychoanalyst, graphic artist, police woman, professor of French, photographer, journalist, students in fine art, philosophy, literature… 15 women from different walks of life have accepted to pose for this series Vis-à-vis, a series in perpetual construction.

The exposure of the female genitalia implies an ontological vulnerability. Is this why it has remained as one of the last bastions of censorship in the field of representation? It seems to me that the female genitalia have suffered from the polar treatments of paternal protectionism, which excludes them from the social field, or male exploitation, which has demands perfectly “cultivated” and remolded vulvas. I wanted to see if there was a strategy that could neutralize traditional diametrical views of the female genitalia operating on these paradigms of attraction-repulsion. This series came into being in order to examine our capacity to look at the female genitalia as they really are, without resorting to a ready-made alibi.

Several axes of reflection were explored in this series:

Horizontality, verticality. I think this is the key axis of reflection when it comes to how to show the female genitalia. The vertical axis is considered the “noble” axis because it distinguishes us from all the quadrupeds. It is also the position that “condemns” the vagina to its invisibility. For this series, I have established a horizontal position of the body that aligns on the same horizon the face and the genitalia, the mouth and the vagina. At the same time, we have a sensation of verticality given that the frame is tight and that the frontal point of view forces us to “face” the picture.

Human, animal. If the vertical position renders us human, are the genitalia not the last vestiges of our animal nature? Simone de Beauvoir describes this ancient struggle of women between the propagation of the species and the desire for individuation and transcendence as such: “Woman’s individuality is constantly combated by the interest of the species; she appears possessed by strange forces… It is not without resistance that the woman lets the interest of the species settle in her body.”

Nature, Culture/Raw, Cooked (Lévi-Strauss). If nature condemns us to animality, the human species attempts by all means to erase traces of our animal nature: clothing, accessories, piercing, waxing, paranoia of body hair… The ultimate step would be to cultivate or “cook” our genitalia, supposedly the rawest part of our body.

Face, genitalia. The personification of the female genitalia is a very ancient theme (Baubô the mythical vulva). If we operate a 90° visual rotation of the photograph, we can see, by a visual contamination of sort, a face that superimposes on the structure of the genitalia. The face is often deemed the most human and the genitalia the most animal part of our being. This visual confusion destabilizes established hierarchies.

Baubô, the mythical vulva

Mouth, Vagina. In the essay “Mouth” by Georges Batailles, the mouth is a high place of individualization in human beings because it is capable of words, whereas in animal life, the mouth is understood as “the principle element in the system of capture, killing, and ingestion of preys where the anus is the point of accomplishment.” In these portraits of women, the “lips” of the genitalia are open and expressive, allowing them to ascend to the same status as the mouth.

Masculinity, femininity. The “faces” that we see superimposed on the structure of the genitalia convey very “masculine” traits. This questions the validity of the foundations that separate the masculine and the feminine.

Eroticism, academicism. The pelvis that one perceives as toppled over reminds us of the arched back that eroticizes the pose according to conventional erotic codes, whereas the frontal viewpoint neutralizes the images (a form of academicism since the Dusseldorf School). This provokes an instability in the reception of the photographs and leaves space for ambiguity and hesitation.

I invited my models to stay open to these tensions, fragilities, and paradoxes of existence that constitute us as women.

thought objects, sense laughters;
heart tickles, soul echos…

Today as I was walking back from my driving class (yes, I let my licence expire and am getting a French licence this summer), I thought about what would happen when the chemistry of love provokes, even momentarily, two super brains to fuse into one and work towards a common end.

I don’t even dare to think of it. The thought makes me shudder with joy and terror. Perhaps only death could follow…

Ok, back to the 3-dimensional world. Sorry if I scared you all - I kind of scared myself.

I have been checkmated. That was awfully heartless of you.

Motionless. Speechless. Expressionless. Tearless. In my out-of-character ungracefulness, I refused to admit to my defeat.

Yes theoretically, there’s no turning back, but the steaming beast in me wanted to violently flip the board over, permanently rewrite the rules of the game, and gently and harmlessly perform an ice-pick lobotomy on your frontal lobe.

Or, I guess I could just as well playfully cover your eyes, and then steal that piece of evidence working against me.

(rapid heartbeats!)

But which piece should I steal? How many steps would I have to go back? Back to BEFORE that fateful moment when our eyes met as recognitions of irresolvable past-life entanglements haunted and drew us back? Back to that past-life entanglement that we left unresolved, because we resigned to the fact that it was irresolvable? Or back to BEFORE the first time that I remember shoving you away?

The points in time where heart conundrums and love debts definitively begin and definitely end have always been points of befuddlement for me…

After a while I said as casually as I could why don’t we suspend judgment a bit longer, pretend that there are possibilities that we don’t yet recognize, other dimensions perhaps — after all, are our understandings not limited by the physical realms of our perceptions, by the here and now?

Currently watching : Women in Love Release date: 04 March, 2003

Ken Russel is my new fetish filmmaker! I think I’ll re-plunge into D.H. Lawrence this August.

*enraptured*

**Also check out this electronic magazine on neuroscience called Brain & Mind. Fascinating stuff!

I just noticed today that I have 69 subscribers on my MySpace blog. I like that number!

Please contact me in person before you desire to upset this delicate balance.

Thank you for your readership, even the silent ones! Your reactions are important to me (even the silent ones) !

Much love,
China Doll

UPDATE: OK, this is no joke, but this morning as I woke up, I noticed that I had 369 friends! The numerologists amongst you, please tell me what’s going on??!

Soixante-nuf, année érotique…

Currently listening: Histoire de Melody Nelson By: Serge Gainsbourg Release date: 22 February, 2001

Mutual loss of words compounds on misconstrued intentions, and I am left impenatrable as stone. I am willing to take all the blame, make amends, open my flesh, but sometimes even open wounds cannot turn the clock back on monumental failures, nor make two parallel paths converge.

What used to be irrepressible joy and drunken feverishness have now become distances and gulfs that no goodwill seems to be able to bridge. You half-heartedly mentioned the word love, but stubborn with the idea that my love was purer in its intensity, I turned my back and wished you good luck moving on. And I knew you would…

© Post-Modern China Doll

Currently watching : The Wild Child Release date: 24 July, 2001