TRANS SEXUAL EXPRESS.
A CLASSIC FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
BARCELONA. CENTRE D'ART SANTA MÒNICA.2001.
Ana Laura Aláez, Janine Antoni, Vasco Araújo, Monica Bonvicini, Leigh Bowery, Cabello/Carceller, Hsia-Fei Chang, Patty Chang, carles Congost, Divine David, Tracey Emin, Cristina García Rodero, Miguel Angel Gaüeca, Chris Korda, Oleg Kulik, Elahe Massumi, Priscilla Monge, Nikos Navridis, Rivane Neuenchwander, Ocaña, Henrik Olesen, Ebru Öseçen, Santiago Sierra and Salla Tykka.
BADAPEST. MÜCSARNOK KUNSTHALLE. 2002
Ana Laura Aláez, Janine Antoni, Vasco Araújo, Manu Arregui, Monica Bonvicini, Leigh Bowery, Cabello/Carceller, Hsia-Fei Chang, Patty Chang, Carles Congost, Péter Csíkvári, Divine David, Tracey Emin, Cristina García Rodero, Miguel Angel Gaüeca, Chris Korda, Oleg Kulik, Elahe Massumi, Priscilla Monge, Nagy Kriszta, Németh Hajnal, Nikos Navridis, Rivane Neuenchwander, Ocaña, Henik Olesen, Ebru Öseçen, Santiago Sierra, Salla Tykka, Szépfalvi Ágnes/ Nemes Csaba and Joana Vasconcelos.
A CORUÑA. PALACIO MUNICIPAL DE EXPOSICIONES, KIOSKO ALFONSO. 2002.
Ana Laura Aláez, Xoán Anleo, Janine Antoni, Vasco Araújo, Manu Arregui, Monica Bonvicini, Leigh Bowery, Patty Chang, Carles Congost, Divine David, Tracey Emin, Cristina García Rodero, Miguel Angel Gaüeca, Chris Korda, Oleg Kulik, Elahe Massumi, Priscilla Monge, Nikos Navridis, Ocaña, María Ruido, Santiago Sierra, Salla Tykka and Joana Vasconcelos.
The exhibition TRANS SEXUAL EXPRESS BARCELONA 2001: A CLASSIC FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM will address changes in sex, sexuality and gender policies and the re-invention of affectionate relationships. The title of the exhibition is a play on the idea of mobility, in which the experience of living and the formation of identity are conceptualised as a continual transit, as a constant becoming. The sub-title is a wry allusion to a canon re-invented from new aesthetic and ideological standpoints. TSEB2001 aims to go further than the numerous body-centred exhibitions held in the nineties. Here, the body is a veritable battleground, criss-crossed by sex, sexuality, gender, race and class, the global and the local, past and future, centre and periphery.
In TSEB2001, subjectivity and the search for equality and solidarity are woven into a biting reflection on the social mores that serve to pigeonhole identities, and in praise of openness to diversity and polymorphism. It is in this connection that we aim to promote difference through a search for equality. To this end, our guest artists from various parts of the world will attempt to show how sex, sexuality and gender issues are linked to ideologies spawned by policies of exclusion designed to maintain the hegemony of some people over others. TSB2001 will focus on the social art formulated by the new sexual, racial and class radicals who question the role models imposed by mass culture, as much as they do the disturbing breakthroughs in biotechnology, while simultaneously
developing a polymorphous capacity for re-inventing the human body.
TSEB 2001 concerns itself with breaking down the barriers set up by
the hierarchical divisions betwen various art disciplines, and with
globalisation as the cornerstone of the neoliberal doctrine that seeks
to do away with differences through galloping standardisation. In short,
TSEB 2001 is billed to be a trans-generational, transexual and transnational
exhibition.
The location of the exhibition venue, the Centre d'Art Santa Monica, at the lower end of the Ramblas and near the harbour, lends added value to the exhibition, as the harbour is itself a metaphor for the circulation of products, and because a large number of bars frequented by female, male and transvestites prostitutes and their customers happen to be in the area. Moreover, the proximity of local brothels endorses the artistic exploration of sexual exchanges, and of the yearnings, phantoms and relationships of submission and power running through them.
SEX UND ROMANCE. By Xabier Arakistain and Rosa Martínez.
ROSA. Sex and love are two fundamental driving forces behind human behaviour. From a feminist viewpoint, it is vital to analyse how these concepts are constructed, both socially and culturally. We could start by defining the differences between the categories of sex, gender and sexuality.
ARAKIS. The three terms come from the bio-medical paradigm (biology, medicine, psychology and sexology) which was instated in the 19th century. The concept of 'sex' has its roots in biology and structure, and it divides the human species according to their genitals, into male and female, on the understanding that we take the distinction to be neutral, objective and impartial. The concept of 'gender' was distinguished from that of 'sex' by feminist social theorists as being the set of expectations, attitudes and values that each culture constructs in social terms and applies to men and women on the grounds of having been born into one sex or the other. 'Sexuality' refers to sexual conduct and desire; that is, for example, heterosexual or homosexual. Thus, they are three different issues. The problem is that these three terms overlap, in keeping with the bio-medical paradigm, which is naturalistic in character, as it asserts that sex is natural, while projecting the illusion that would have us believe that the heterosexual-masculine-male and heterosexual-feminine-female are 'natural' prototypes of the human species.
Of course, this distinction is far from being neutral, as it is eavily biased in favour of patriarchal societies, dominated by males. In 1949, when Simone de Beauvoir asserted, 'One is not born a woman; one becomes a woman', she ushered in a line of thought, from the stance of social science, which was able to prove scientifically that sex, gender and sexuality were all social constructions, and that the relationships between the three categories were also socially determined. By now, everyone knows (or ought to) that one's sexual orientation is a personal option which has nothing to do with sex or gender. For instance, one can be a very feminine lesbian woman. To give another example, it is also becoming more acceptable (even in bio-medical ideology) to be a male of feminine gender, as in the case of male-female transexuals, the subject of considerable controversy, although bio-medical ideology uses it as a pretext to justify so-called 'sex-change operations'. However, there is still resistance to accepting that the sex category should not go beyond a structure of flesh, blood, bones... This is so because sex is constructed by gender. Even today, we cannot help projecting on a male or female body all those social ideas of what we men and women are supposed to be, and what social pigeonhole we should therefore be occupying. Further, as these three categories are socially articulated, they can and indeed do undergo transformation throughout people's lives: people may, for instance, change their sexual orientation; in other words, they are mobile. For me, it's as simple as the fact that the earth is round and time is relative, but it also took time for these scientific facts to be accepted by the majority. So, you're probably right in suggesting that one has to continue explaining these issues, although I suspect that any difficulty in grasping them actually belies a staunch resistance to understanding them. Being a die-hard can often be so omfortable! You have always talked to me of mobility as a positive value...
ROSA. Movement and mobility are associated with life, with change, with transformation and also with risk. Immobility is a symbol of death, but also of safety and control. Mobility and paralysis remind me of a work by Barbara Kruger in which, above the figure of a woman seated on a chair, is written: 'We have received orders not to move'. It alludes to patriarchal structuring, by which the male principle is highly mobile, while women are assigned the role of staying at home, of protecting the family. And, if we disobey that law, we are liable to be punished. I feel that women should fight to be as free as men, in order to forge our destinies beyond any preassigned gender roles. I am well aware that building one's own freedom has an essential economic-class-component, but it is extremely salutary to banish oneself, to become a nomad, to break out of the moulds that are imposed on us. It is these continuous transits that Levy Strauss refers to by his notion of 'floating signifiers', which treats identity as something changing, mobile, interchangeable, which calls into question the essentialisms that the die-hards cling to. The maps of human identities should be constantly redrawn, but the one that appears to give you the biggest headache is that of the human genome...
ARAKIS. There are scientists, undoubtedly earnest about the issue of the human genome, who conclude that we closely resemble insects, or that there are often greater differences between members of the same race than between those of different races. But, then there are the same old bores that are now going on about the 'homosexual gene', with their studies of the brains of men and women, rich and poor or whites and blacks... Coincidentally, these studies always yield the best results for rich, white heterosexual men. It's enough to split one's sides laughing, if it wasn't for the serious social implications involved and, as if that weren't enough, with the map of the human genome, we now have that fascist discourse that places people their standing in society according to their 'natural' features-currently described as their 'genetic' features, which is more difficult to decry because it has become so sophisticated. But, as the anthropologist, Lourdes Mendez, says in 'Os Labirintos do Corpo', as sophisticated as those arguments may be, the sensible thing is to remain sceptical about them until we have the right tools to analyse and refute them. Personally, I have no time at all for that hogwash about some gene or other that 'characterises' human conduct. They have to distinguish, for example, between a gene that causes cancer and one that produces homosexuality. One is a physical (biological) trait, while the other is a social characteristic-social behaviour. Some time ago I attended a congress on sexology and heard the arguments put forward by Simon Le Vay (one of those who claim homosexuality is caused by a gene), who, incidentally, declared himself to be gay, and I came to the conclusion that I doubt very much whether his genes have anything to do with the condition his brain has been left in by 'whatever the Opus Dei called in the United States'. The studies he based his assertions on were a compendium of all kinds of oddities, which did not happen to include scientific accuracy. A right circus that was! His theory was backed up by seven necropsies conducted on seven male corpses of HIV victims! Revolting!!! Moreover, that preoccupation with naturalising sex, gender and sexuality is not limited to the human species; it extends to the rest of the animal kingdom, when it's ages since we agreed that humans differ from other species inhabiting the planet, among other reasons, for their cognitive capacities. And, what about love? Oh, l'amour, l'amour! You were adamant about including love relationships in the exhibition.
ROSA. Love is an extraordinary example of abandoning one's own identity to temporarily inhabit the body of another. Love is a privileged way of encountering the other, of being renewed, of resisting death. Love is like diamond-cutting: some relationships are cultivated by gently honing, day after day, while others are the result of an accurate, one-off cleaving blow. There are sexual loves and platonic loves. Friendship is a marvellous form of non-sexual love... Exhibitions can also be an act of love. They involve an enormous concentration of energy, the will to communicate, to approach others, to gratify them, to share a vision of the world. Indeed, the phantasmagoria of love, sex and coexistence is present in many of these exhibits. In the theoretical field, 'The New Amorous Disorder', by Pascal Bruckner and Alain Finkielkraut, was vital to shaping the new becomings in love relationships: two men take up the ideas held by many feminists and see the woman-becoming of Deleuze as a hope of re-inventing sexuality. Today sexuality is still the paramount way of controlling love in our culture. They address the utilitarian ideology of the orgasm, the tyranny of the genital factor, the reduction of sexuality to the lower abdomen, the last private territory of western man. They ask whether 'sexuality' (from repression to liberation) might not actually be a set of deportments constructed by an Order that seeks to fix desire in a controllable space. They question whether so-called sexual liberation is not actually a ploy by male eroticism to make the objects of male sexual desire more freely available. The average present-day European male's dream, they point out, is for his lover (man or woman, wife or prostitute) to address him saying: 'Your penis fascinates me; I marvel at your pleasure'. Pornography and prostitution are the utmost, most conspicuous symptoms of this state of affairs. Pornography makes plain the mechanical, disciplinary despotism of the genital focus, as it does the fantasy that seduction is unnecessary, that no personal trammels, obstacles or hindrances should stand in the way of satiating one's pleasure. Pornography is the 'mise en scene' of the power the male body dreams of exercising over the feminine, enslaved to his phantoms. Money serves to buy submission and to compensate for man's lack of consideration for his partner's desires. While she make feign pleasure, a prostitute is no body wrapped in delight, but a body at work. Indeed, prostitution is no more immoral than the work of a labourer, an executive, an artist or a writer. Interest in one's wage is the feature common to most workers, and prostitution is a model of contract politics. So, too, is marriage, with its obligations and prohibitions. These social tyrannies are augmented by the 'tyranny of the body'-the imposition of beauty standards by the mass media. It is in this milieu that transvestites fluctuate between nonconformity about their own body and inordinately accentuating their feminine attributes. What do you feel about this?.
ARAKIS. I'm afraid nonconformity about one's body is not the exclusive preserve of transvestites, otherwise, how could you account for the upsurge in clinics specialising in 'remodelling' one's body to the latest beauty standards. We might agree that they have mushroomed to meet the demand of their female clientele. Social pressure to conform to a body standard has targeted women and their gender peers-(male-female) transvestites-who have seen their share of the action. But, to address the transvestite issue, ever since the eighties, it has become fashionable to say that the transvestite is a model of nonconformity, on the rationale that s/he stands for that idea in general in a highly visual and conspicuous way. In part, I agree with that. It is the critical point in the naturalistic, partiarchal commodity system and, as we already know, that system is one of the main catches for safeguarding the status quo. As for inordinately accentuating their feminine attributes... For starters, femininity is a male invention and, admittedly, many transvestites, transexuals, drag queens, etc. have taken on the worst of those stereotypes and present a tremendously male-chauvinist discourse. I would second traditional feminist criticisms in this respect. Here what I don't agree with is that the figure of the transvestite personifies nonconformity. At the end of the nineties, we saw how transvestites, drag queens and transexuals that did not question the roles assigned to women, which set them as socially subordinate to men, were mainly successful. For me, those figures stood for conformity. However, things can also get very complicated. Two people dressed the same, such as two transvestites dressed as Marilyn Monroe, apparently identical, may stand for two diametrically opposed currents, depending on their attitudes. Each context usually involves different circumstances and strategies. Things have to be analysed and interpreted in their proper context, because meaning is generated in a specific setting. But, while they may not feature prominently in the media, there are also many transvestites who uphold for other values: they cab be feminist, Marxist or ecologist activists or anything else-human nature is so varied. Although few and far between, there have also been instances of, say, media drag queens who have concerned themselves with criticising misogyny and issues of class and race in hypercapitalistic gay lifestyles, and who have even questioned the role model of the type of drag queen you referred to, which have been launched to fame by the media. I love it when people make well-grounded criticism! And, there is so much to criticise... for instance, what do you think about the power relations in marriage or in prostitution?.
ROSA. In all relationships involving exchange (libidinal, economic, cultural), there is a politics of domination which is worth reflecting on. The patriarchal contract (whether the fleeting one in prostitution, the marriage contract, or the paternal-filial or labour contract) entails subjecting 'the other' to one's will. Economic conventions involve the aggressive male or the exploitative employer buying the submission and forbearance of the person that depends on them in order to serve their interests, whether these are to do with affection, economics or simply social status. When the slave rebels or calls into question his master's authority, he soon becomes the target of physical assault or moral harassment. Your boss does not only wish to buy your time, and to have your body locked into the working day. At heart, what he wants is to buy your conscience, so that you become an instrument of his strategy of productivity and even believe yourself to be happy in your submission. This also occurs in art, when an acclaimed artist is forced by the market to churn out the same old cliches to guarantee sales. This applies to the role assigned to female artists, and to many artists who are marginalised for their sexual or racial ideologies. As the Guerilla Girls said ironically: one of the advantages of being a woman artist is that, whatever you do, your art will inevitably be labelled as feminine.
ARAKIS. They're so right! Labels are so often applied to feminist art, art by women, gay art, body art, for the purpose of devaluing the artists and their works. That ties in with attempts to dissociate art from the social sphere, noticeable in certain sectors, which is really masking rather vile interests. It is actually a ploy to conceal the inequality that arises both in the imagined community from which the content in the artworks emerges, and in the various processes involved in producing such works. This is something that mainly affects marginalised communities and women.
