RadioCona's So.und.ing Project hosts Wanda & Nova deViator

My text about Wanda's and Nova deViator's collaborative art projects has been included in a radioCona broadcast as part of its Zvo.či.ti / So.und.ing Project in December 2010. The project consists of a series of audio broadcasts about Slovenian composers, musicians, sound innovators, activists, multimedia artists, authors of electro-acoustic and various sound experiments. (Photo: Nada Žgank)


The radio broadcast about Wanda's and Nova deViator's work can be heard here.
Below are the English and the Slovene version of the text.

Co-effectuation: Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič alias Wanda & Nova deViator
The collaboration between Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič began two year ago with the performance Ways of Love (2009) and continued with Frozen Images (2009/10) – the latter was credited to pseudonyms Wanda and Nova deViator. Maja Delak is this year’s recipient of the Prešeren Foundation Award, a choreographer and dancer, who has behind her a considerable number of collaborations with different musicians, dancers, actors, and choreographers. The same goes for the musician, DJ, and intermedia artist Luka Prinčič, who first appeared as a performer precisely in the joint projects with Maja Delak, while in this exchange, Wanda picked up the microphone for the first time, wrote the lyrics for their trippy electro tracks, and also sang them.

Their projects intertwine many – often colliding – languages: rhythm, voice, music, noise; video, photography, theory; manifestoes, poetry. It seems that their reparatory investigation, this courageous picking up from all over, wagered on the possibility of their own surprise over the outcomes of their collaborative process and over what may emerge from their overlapping, dissonances, resonances, slips, and congruencies. It seems that their wager is won – as they have offered to the home audiences a new aesthetics and politics; well, at least to that part of the audience who had missed or overlooked the Ljubljana-based queer dissidents from the 80s.

Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič's performative events scream with punk ethics and kitchy porn chic aesthetics, which come together also in Western grassroots or DIY feminism of the “third wave”. I was reminded of the fact that this feminism skirted the borders of our country precisely at their appearance at the International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns, where Frozen Images resonated as a genuine manifesto! It was a moment of relief and joy and empowerment, because the authors intentionally and unbendingly, passionately and sexily, approached the themes that are rarely dealt with in our space, certainly not at the same time: lust for enjoyment, anxiety, hypersexualisation and pornification of our bodies, violence, idealisation of love, and of course – the motor of everything – consumerism.

Ways of Love meander between the sampled, or temporarily “frozen”, scenes of two types of gender roles: those marked with violence and those founded on consensual submission and dominance. The insight into how to become aware of the power relations in relationships and how to break the vicious circle of violent love is disclosed in the performance precisely with the emptying of form – which could not be other than violent and painful. The second performance event, Frozen Images, raised a possibility of stirring up and overcoming the violence we exert over ourselves under the pressure of buy-and-sell images of Sex Appeal, Beauty, Health, Youth, and Success – with laughter. With lust. With objectifying to our own taste. With our own perverseness and again – with love.

This sumptuous and made-for-all-senses multimedia work by Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič is a genuine cut’n’paste, a swift image and sound collage that allows for many readings and listenings, many feelings and reflections. But only after one tears away from the fleeting images and voicings; only after one dances to the wild riot grrrl version of You Don’t Own Me, with Wanda and deViator jumping all over the stage. And this may very well be the most beautiful achievement or co-effectuation Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič’s collaboration: their accessibility and clarity – despite the work’s decentredness – makes their work is inspiring and empowering. Ultimately also because the “you” from You Don’t Own Me does not refer to a man made of flesh and blood but rather to Martell or some other corporation that imposes patriarchal patterns of behaviour for everyday use. (Translated by Katja Kosi.)

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Součinkovanje: Maja Delak in Luka Prinčič alias Wanda & Nova deViator
Sodelovanje Maje Delak in Luke Prinčiča se je začelo s performansom Poti ljubezni (2009) in nadaljevalo z Zamrznjenimi podobami (2009/10) – pod slednje sta se podpisala kot Wanda in Nova deViator. Maja Delak je, kot že veste, lanskoletna nagrajenka Prešernovega sklada, sicer pa koreografinja in plesalka, ki ima za sabo že lepo število sodelovanj z različnimi glasbenicami, plesalkami, igralci in koreografi. Enako velja za glasbenika, didžeja in intermedijskega umetnika Luka Prinčiča, ki je v projektih z Majo Delak prvič nastopil kot performer. »Wanda« je prvič prijela za mikrofon, napisala besedila za njune zatripane elektro komade in jih tudi odpela.

V obeh projektih se prepleta – in bode – mnogo jezikov. Ritem, gib, glas, glasba, hrup. Video, fotografija, teorija. Manifesti, poezija. Zdi se, da je njuno reparativno raziskovanje, to pogumno jemanje s sto koncev in krajev, stavilo na možnost, da bosta morda presenečena nad tem, kaj bo v procesu skupnega dela in doživljanja nastalo iz njunih prekrivanj, neubranosti, sozvočij, spodrsljajev in ujemanj. Meni se zdi, da sta stavo dobila. In z njima domače občinstvo, saj sta nam ponudila novo estetiko in politiko – vsaj tistim, ki nismo vedeli za ljubljanske queer diverzante iz osemdesetih.

Iz njunih performansov kričita naredi-sama pank etika in kičasta porno chic estetika, ki sta se menda prvič srečali v enem od zahodnih feminizmov »tretjega vala«. Da je ta feminizem naše kraje skoraj povsem zaobšel, sem se zavedla po njunem nastopu, ko sem občutila pravo olajšanje in radost in moč. Zdi se mi, da zato, ker sta tako premišljeno in odločno, strastno in seksi stopila naravnost k temam, ki so pri nas redko na spisku, sploh pa ne skupaj: o gnanju za užitkom, hiperseksualizaciji in pornifikaciji naših teles, o idealiziranju ljubezni in o potrošništvu, ki vse skupaj poganja. Na feminističnem in queer festivalu Rdeče zore, kjer sem Zamrznjene podobe doživela prvič, je performans zvenel kot manifest!

Poti ljubezni so nasemplani in razdrobljeni, začasno »zamrznjeni« prizori vrste nasilnih spolnih vlog, pa tudi prostovoljnega podrejanja in nadvlade – vlog, ki jih v performansu niti približno ne enačita z nasiljem. V njuni prvi predstavi je olajšanje in uvid v to, kako prekiniti začarani krog nasilne ljubezni, prineslo prav izpraznjevanje forme, ki ni moglo biti drugačno kot nasilno in boleče. V drugi predstavi, Zamrznjene podobe, sta nakazala možnost, da je v nasilje, ki ga nad sabo izvajamo zaradi varljivih kupoprodajnih podob o tem, kako izgledajo seksapil, lepota, zdravje in mladost, mogoče podrezati s smehom. Poželenjem. Mislijo. Objektivizacijo. Perverzijo. In ponovno – z ljubeznijo.

Njuno razkošno, skoraj vsem čutom dostopno multimedijsko delo je pravi cut'n'paste, hiter slikovni in zvokovni kolaž, ki dopušča veliko branj, veliko poslušanj, veliko občutenj in razmislekov. A šele potem, ko se odtržeš od bežečih slik in besed. Potem ko z Wando in deViatorjem, ki skačeta po odru, zaplešeš na njuno podivjano riot grrrl verzijo komada You Don't Own Me. Performansa Maje Delak in Luke Prinčiča navdihujeta in dajeta moč, ker sta dostopna. Ker si pustita blizu. Pa tudi zato, ker v tistem »you« iz You Don't Own Me ne vidita moškega iz mesa in krvi, ampak prej kak Martell ali drugo korporacijo, ki šopa patriarhalne vzorce obnašanja za vsakdanjo rabo.

Getting the blues with Tom Robbins

Review of Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)
(Full text.)

(Excerpt)
There's girls on the Rubber Rose who are political, but I don't share their views, Jellybean Bonanza says to Sissy. I got no cowgirl ideology to expound. I'm not recruiting and I'm not converting. (...) Delores del Ruby makes a big fuss about cowgirlism being a force to combat cowboyism, but I'm too happy just being a cowgirl to worry about stuff like that. Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it. (152)


First edition cover from 1976

In other words, Bonanza is convinced that politics are dull, ideology-driven and incompatible with creative, joyful and supposedly non-ideological resistance that she choose for herself. This dichotomy is stipulated in the novel's climax where the cowgirls from the Rubber Rose ranch are facing a battle with the federal police (a remake of the classic Western shoot-out).

The FBI is there because the girls have kept the last flock of migrating whooping cranes in United States at their lake for a suspiciously long by feeding them LSD, prevented authorities from accessing the flock, and refused to negotiate. When the protagonist, SissyHankshaw, returns to the ranch, and despite the situation, her cowgirl friends organize a small welcoming party behind the barricades because, well, Sissy Hankshaw Gitche had returned and a party was only proper (368). 'Aint' that just like women,' growled the ghost of General Custer, peering through the grass. Yes, oh yes yes yes sweet yes. Ain't that just like women, indeed, (368) is the narrators comment who quickly corrects himself by adding that ghosts, because they can walk through the walls, have a tendency to generalize (...). Your author, however, should know better. What should have been said was not 'just like women' but 'just like some women' or, better, 'just like the feminine spirit'. All women do not possess the feminine spirit (368).

Tom Robbins's essentialist definition of “femininity” seems to be reserved for women who have joined the party. The women who stay on the barricades are seen as unfeminine, and the way this notion connects to Robbins's idea of Sissy's “magical” and “poetic” innocence is further established when he adds that they did not join the party because Sissy meant nothing to them; she was noncowgirl. A goofy-handed freak. An older woman who had starred in advertisements that had told them that their cunts smelled bad (368).

If the only women in the novel who criticize Sissy's politics (or, rather, their absence in the traditional sense) are in Robbins's view unfeminine, it is further possible to claim that the writer's perception of women's feminist political engagement is quite stereotypical: it is “essentially masculine” and turning women into men because they fight against authorities in a “masculine” way: in this case, with armed struggle, supposedly inappropriate for women who are “pacifist by nature”.

Still, rather than concluding that political violence is, in Robbins's eyes, less important or valid than Sissy's poetic rebellion, I would suggest that the final pages of Cowgirls hint at his Jungian understanding of “femininity” and “masculinity” as different ways of perceiving and approaching reality, not as qualities pertaining to people of different sexes. His controversial view is feminist in the sense that Robbins is aware of both material and (to a lesser extent) metaphysical foundations of gender asymmetry in the West.

However, I see it as controversial exactly because it seems that the basic condition for Sissy's indeed poetic and magical fight against assimilation and normalization is her political ignorance, guaranteed by her physical and mental “perpetual motion” which re-introduces the utopian idea that in order to challenge the axis of domination, one has to step outside the social order; one has to ignore rather than subvert “the master's tools”.

This position is utopian because, as Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway have shown, it is impossible to inhabit “the culture of no culture” unless you sacrifice the very differences that constitute your accountable position in the world and at the same time believe that you have in this way “exited” the world (discourse).

Tom Robbins favors Sissy's feminine, natural, poetic, magical, pure and individual resistance to the collective, separatist and armed struggle of cowgirls fighting against cowboyism. However, he does not dismiss the latter as irrelevant. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues reads as an attempt at questioning what counts as “significant resistance” and offers an answer, similar to that of Sandra Harding: the proliferation of narratives of resistance is possible only by abandoning Cartesian dualism. While Robbins fails to do so in the context of his essentialist feminism, he successfully constructs a shifting postmodernist narrative in which there is space for a multitude of voices.

The Chink observes that in times such as ours (...) when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes a duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption (229). If the reader is willing to join this postmodern game, he or she will learn that feminist politics are not immune to totalizing accounts of “subversion” and “liberation” and that “disruptive” strategies of resistance are situated – they are specific responses to specific mechanisms of disciplining.

Moreover, this poststructuralist approach allows one to see why the playful and shifting narrative in Cowgirls is necessary for contextualizing the “middle ranges of agency” between the “extremes of compulsion and voluntarity” (E. K. Sedgwick). It also allows one to see why the novel ends in a fit of laughter and does not joins the mourning rock that “weeps for the cowgirls who think like cowboys”.

Like cowgirls, Robbins seems to get the blues when he is forced to choose between politics and poetry.

Istanbul Pride afterthoughts

Here are Anna Ehrlemark's impressions about the XXX Politics, or as we prefer, For Fuck's Sake workshop we held at the 2009 Pride Istanbul week. Below are my additions... Check out Ruzgar's photos, too!

The workshop took place in a dance studio called Çıplak Ayaklar or, in literal translation, Naked Feet, a name that, if you ask the neighbors, seems to suggest more than you could ever imagine seeing at the hammam right next door. Not only did we listen to on-screen moans and sighs at lower volume; during the workshop, the entrance door was locked – just in case another guardian of pub(l)ic morals would decide to check up on yet another shameless exposure of conscientious objectors who, among other kind and brave people, run the venue.
 

The studio is placed in a small dead-end street beside a metal workshop where a large sun-tanned man was smoking a cigarette, resting in the fading daylight while people began gathering for the discussion and screening. To my great surprise, there were people there who said they never watch porn but have come to see whether the independent and possibly queer porn films have something “less revolting” and more ticklish to offer.

After seeing portions of Trans Entities: The Nasty Love of Papi' and Wil and The Crash Pad, a girl said she could only enjoy these films if she put herself into a “male mindset”, a comment that needed further explaining since the exact characteristics of a “male mindset” seemed to be unknown to male and female participants alike. And yet, our demands to explain her claim might have been too pushy. In fact, it looked like we were too busy proving our point to actually hear her answer.

Did she say that the pleasures embodied on-screen were too far from the ones she likes? Or that the use of porn for arousal is, in her eyes, a domain so traditionally male, that it is easier for her to imagine herself in that role than it would be to claim that space, make it comfortable for her as a woman? Perhaps all she was saying was that she could not identify with those filmed bodies – an issue that seems to enter reflections on porn use only at workshops like these. As an abundance of sources claims, the essential condition for one’s enjoyment of porn is the opposite: you have to accept the objectification of another’s body in order to let your fantasies go, and allow yourself to scribble your own handwriting on those bodies. And then again: if you feel objectified and reduced to a sex object in real life – how can you be expected to do the same to people acting in virtual representations of sex? Especially those that deliberately try to familiarize you with the actors, de-objectify them, by interviewing them and showing the interviews before the sex, for example.
 

If we were satisfied with Barbara DeGenevieve’s amusing definition of queer porn as porn in which “queer people are having queer sex”, feminist porn proved to be a more difficult subject to pin down. As mentioned in Anna's notes, Jennifer Lyon Bell’s film received quite contradictory responses, all made in the name of feminism. In order to make any kind of discussion possible – in spite of the very articulate and respectful participants – it seemed that everybody has to define what they claim in the name of feminism first. And we tried.

There were people who have already seen all the films we brought for screening, and willingly shared other film suggestions with us. Like Abby Winters, an amateur lesbian site that prides itself with moral, or rather, ethical integrity. Also recommended were the Straight Guys for Gay Eyes site and the award-winning documentary about female masculinity by Gabriel Baur, Venus Boyz (2002). And, of course the fabulous “erotic noir” SM film by Maria Beatty, The Black Glove.

During The Crash Pad scene screening, I was smoking a cigarette in the studio’s kitchen. While watching familiar scenes, I realized that I must have reached my limit. I must have seen that film four times, and like it happens with “real” unimaginative sex, I definitely had enough. The scene that aroused me at the first viewing seemed terribly long and predictable now, and the only joy I could find was in the fact that I was looking at the scene in a mirror that reflected another mirror’s reflection of the screen.

I was thinking about what Luca Donnini said earlier that day: that from a genital point of view, the number of possibilities, sex positions, is very limited: our bodies are too predictably familiar, too similar to each other. And yet, if you talk about genders and their possible expressions, the details and differences multiply into infinity. While the challenge of making interesting, challenging, arousing queer porn would seem to lie right there – in the ability to portray that playful variety – it seems, strangely enough, that a whole lot of people are turned on more (and therefore keep looking for) visual representations of sex that are familiar, mirroring more of the same familiarity.

And thinking about the girl who had to put on her “male” persona in order to enjoy “women-friendly” porn, I could think of only one question: could it be that enjoyment of independent, feminist or queer porn requires a process of un-learning the rules of the genre (allowed and accessible fantasies included) as defined by mainstream production first. Could it be that, in order to enjoy porn, you also have to un-learn behaviors that are socially approved for your sex? And then: does it demand an exposure to a great variety of independent queer porn so that you can familiarize yourself with queer bodies and previously unseen fantasies, and get used to them. In other words, does it demand, like other kinds of sensitivities, a training in the ability to imagine the yet unseen and inexperienced? Something like our attempt to stamp out “common morals” with our “naked” feet and vulnerable ethics, perhaps.