Retro Rant: Why I HATE Spencer Tunick.

I thought I’d write the occasional ‘retro rant’ as I think of them, as in, stuff I’ve ranted in the past, that I’d like to rant blog style, that don’t fall into this month by month what’s happening in Sydney/to me thing I’ve taken to.

So this time last year Spencer Tunick came to Sydney and provided me with one of the most horrid experiences of my life to date.

I’m fond of nudity. I like being naked. I’m not a nudist, but when my flat-mates are out I enjoy walking round my house naked. I skinny dip with my friends any chance I get. I sleep naked… blah blah blah. Point is, naked, for me, = good. I’m also fond of art and quite taken by my city.

So, when Spencer Tunick decided to do a Mardi Gras photo thingy on the Opera House steps and needed a whole bunch of people to volunteer to be models and pose naked on the steps I was pretty keen and thought it would be a bit of fun. I didn’t know heaps about Spencer Tunick but I’d seen some of his snaps and thought it was an okay gimmick. Lots of naked people, together, at a landmark. It looks impressive. Not sure what it says exactly but the sea of flesh is evocative and the landmarks themselves are beautiful and there’s a rhythm to them and a repetition and connection to spaces and a sort of freedom-from-the-body thing going on. I was stupid. I should have read up on him a bit and discovered the dude is a jerk.

I also thought the general idea of this pic could have been really nice. It was supposed to be a Mardi Gras event. I figured there was a gay/straight/queer/whatever, we’re all here, naked, unguarded, in OUR city, side by side, standing together, people power/solidarity thing that could have felt really powerful and buzzy. I’ve felt collective-nudity-power buzz before too. Before the Iraq war I attended a naked protest where a whole bunch of women got together and spelt out ‘No War’ with their naked bodies for a photograph (I was in the r) and it was awesome. There was excitement and purpose and a huge women-bonding/fighting feeling in the air. It was kind of euphoric and magical. Now, I’m not saying Spencer’s stupid photo had to give me buzz and I’m some sort of nudity-buzz junkie chasing a thrill. I didn’t mind that there was no feeling, just would have been nice… anyway, the event was unpleasant. We were treated like cattle and did free work (that’s what volunteering is) unthanked, for 5 hours, It was fairly cold, being 4am, and he could have taken 15 minutes to do a little pep this-is-what-we’re-here-for spiel. Instead, the event felt hollow and yuck. Sadly though, for me, that wasn’t the worst bit.

Now, to set the scene, to add insult to injury, I’d had a REALLY shit parade night for Mardi Gras. I don’t feel like writing about it, but it sucked. So I was hoping this event was to be my ridiculous-has-fun-celebrating-Mardi-Gras thing. And so when it turned yuck I felt completely destroyed. The really yuck bit was, Spencer, decided to tell us that we have to kiss the person we came with… “If you came with a lover, kiss your lover, if you came with a friend, kiss your friend, if you came alone, kiss a stranger!” Cute on paper right? A whole bunch of people embracing/kissing… a love shot… an intimate shot… cept, he didn’t say, and needed to say, “if anyone isn’t comfortable with this, they can sit this shot out.” Without that sentence I didn’t feel like I could back out and didn’t. Not to mention, the call out was for people comfortable getting naked, no-where were we briefed we might be asked to do this. Okay, so the, ridiculous-gets-in-a-horrid-situation isn’t entirely Spencer’s fault, it has a little to do with ridiculous-can’t-say-no, but still, Spencer put me in this situation. I had come to the event with my long-time friend (and I mean long-time in the platonic sense, not in the Sontag-and-Liebovitz sense, my flat mate and I have been friends since we were 14, and she’s straighty-180) who I’d just moved in with. We thought it would be a fun, bonding, ‘yay we’re flatmates and it’s Mardi Gras’ thing to do together. So I was uncomfortable with the idea of embracing and kissing my friend. In the end Spencer said it was okay if we went cheek to cheek, but cheek to cheek still meant our bodies came breast to breast… and I hug my flat-mate from time to time but hugging clothed, and hugging naked are two very different things. The awkward part was, in the queue to get into the event we’d run into an ex-boyfriend of hers. They were both super cool about it and totally fine with the naked thing… but that meant we were a three when Spencer came to ask for the kiss shot. We decided to both kiss my flat mate on either cheek and have a girl-in-the-middle-of-affection-from-best-friend-and-ex-boyfriend tableaux. This seemed to work for us three and we were not without discomfort about the whole thing but were reasonably happy. Then this old man walks up to us, he’s at the event alone, he reads my flat-mate and her ex-boyfriend as a couple and me as the 3^rd wheel (stupid heteronormative bastard, the ex was the 3^rd wheel, alright so flatmate and I were’t a couple but we were very much at the event as a pair grrr) asks if I’d join him for the shot. I don’t know how to say no, and I hated the thought of someone being stuck alone, cut adrift around a sea of pairs… so I said yes. Now, that was a bad call on my part, but I still thought I could design this embrace as I chose, to my level of comfort, and I think so did he, I don’t think this guy meant to creep me out. So we were going to have our arms around each other’s shoulders as our version of strangers embracing. Spencer said no to that, everyone’s cheek was to rest on their partner’s cheek if they weren’t going to snog for him, so, as I explained before, cheek to cheek meant my breasts were resting on this old mans chest. It was the most awful, uncomfortable thing to endure and Spencer made us hold the pose for about 10 minutes while he took his shots. For 10 whole minutes I had to listen to this poor guy’s, who probably couldn’t help it, breath quicken in my ear, and I could feel his pulse quicken through my breast. It felt so awful and we couldn’t even look each other in the eye when Spencer finally set us free from that hold. That’s what happened. 8 months later we got a copy of the print in the mail as our payment for our services. He didn’t use the fucking lover one. It’s a really shit photograph. It’s up the Opera House’s nose and you get no sense of the beauty of the building. The Harbour Bridge is cut off and its just a crap photo. So Spencer Tunick made my last-years-Mardi-Gras more sucky than it already was and he’s a shit photographer anyway. Fuck you Spencer Tunick, you inconsiderate, megalomaniac, talentless, jerk.

Anyway, Mardi Gras 2011 just started, hopefully this year will involve less jerks (and humiliating traumatic experiences) and more fun. Happy Mardi Gras! Be safe, and don't volunteer to help out fuck-wit artists!

DVD/VHS rant:

I needed to write, before I compose my long-winded Feb rant, which I'll end up posting mid-march, because I picked up my flat-mate's DVD this morning and I knew it was empty, just by the weight and I needed to discuss this issue. I thought to myself "hmmm, I wonder where the disk is, I'd like to watch it" then caught myself, and asked myself, "why the fuck did I decide this case was empty?" And I looked in it, and it was. What the fuck does a disk weigh? like a gram? I know the 1 gram difference between a case with and without it's disk? Shit. I need to stop watching so many fucking DVDs and go outside. Meanwhile. I HATE DVDs. Please please please god-of-technology, please bring back VHS. VHS, sometimes, after 15 years or so, went a bit crackly but generally it was super reliable. All my DVDs skip and jump and are fucked and a stupid stupid waste of my money. And hiring the damn fucking things is so useless. I miss huge chunks of films and TV shows cos people clearly hire films and use them as fucking coasters for the week. grrrr. That's all. my knowledge of DVDs and their weight alarms me and I want a VCR, forever.

January (11) Rant

Okay, one month into this 2011 year! Here’s my January rant…

1) Theatre rant: I only made it to the theatre twice this month. I saw Snow on Mars, and Open for Inspection. Snow on Mars was a Theatre of Image production, and a part of the Sydney Festival. As a tangent, the Sydney Festival creeps me out a bit. It is so manufactured and hollow. The festival-first-night thing has a certain buzz to it but the rest of it flies by in a blur of yellow flags and shit I can’t afford to see. Maybe I’m just bitter and poor (and too old to sleep out for tix-for-nix, which, granted, is an awesome facet of the happenings) … but the city just doesn’t explode with ideas and freedom and creativity in a way I feel a festival-throwing city should… hmmm… Anyway. Snow on Mars was directed by Gale Edwards and was pretty rad. I had lots of big giggles. I really loved Theatre of Image shows when I was a kid. Their version of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince (that they produce periodically) used to melt my little brother and I into puddles of tears. Snow on Mars was still fun as a big kid and the design elements were lush and fun. There were really magical, walking-on-stars moments and the combination of graphics and circus was superb. Dannielle Jackson’s work as Waylon’s friend Gabi was gorgeous, humorous and heart-warming. The whole cast had a great pitch. A really nice combination of “big” for the kids and sincerity, for everyone. Fun. Kids theatre is really important too. We need to take our kids to the theatre, get their imagination’s humming, get them drowned and inspired in theatre darkness. Important. Open For Inspection, directed by Sandra Stockley runs at Darlo (Darlinghurst Theatre) till the 13^th of Feb. Firstly, I think Darlo might be my favourite theatre venue in Sydney. It’s intimate. It’s really un-pretentious and un-wanky. You can bring your drinks into the theatre, and, more often than not, the shows are pretty damn good. In fact, some of my favourite theatre experiences have happened there. The Illusion, (Dir. Damien Miller) in 2006, was one of my most magical, melty, moments of theatre ever. It was, and was about, theatre magic. Yum. Anyway Darlo is cool cos it’s co-op-y and I like independent theatre cos it tends to be brave and take risks. It also means it can be a bit underdone and the money-less-ness and pressed-for-time-ness can show, but sometimes the team triumphs that and you don’t notice the lack of time and money and it just works and is amazing, and even when it doesn’t defy the odds, you can usually forgive it it’s co-op-y quirks and just enjoy they awesomeness that they have mustered. Darlo is cool too cos they try to fund and produce and partially fund shows so the team gets some money for their time, without making it main-stage wank that is. Anyway, Open for Inspection was a really fun night out. Slightly too long and a bit lacking an ending but lots and lots of laughs and some super rad and funny tunes. Sophie Webb, who blew us fucking away as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors 3 years ago (Dir. Stephen Colyer, New Theatre, 2008) is finally back in a lead song belting role and she is stunning and sexy and silly and has such a fucking wonderful voice! The rest of the cast are rad too. I didn’t buy a program so I can’t name names properly but there are some really funny performances and great numbers. See it if you can!

2) Flicks rant: I saw Aronofsky’s Black Swan. I have a soul! Yay! I couldn’t speak for about ten minutes after I left the cinema. I sat with my friend in the sun and we stared at the sky until we were able to gasp words. I’d never watch the film again. The cinematography is too jerky (for effect) and made me feel nauseous, and, it’s a head-fuck-y-horror-film-like experience that I only need once, however, it was an amazing experience. Madness, ambition, anorexia, self-harm, performance and performing are rigorously examined. Most importantly (for me, cos I love a good performance) Natalie Portman is FUCKING AMAZING. I haven’t seen acting like that in a billion years. I had no idea she was capable of that. The scene in the bathroom where she calls her mother and tells her she got the role made me tear up. The gorgeous and heart-wrenching mixture of ambition/relief/excitement/fear/guilt/euphoria that Portman nailed in a few moments was utterly stunning and the film is riddled with Portman-nails-everything-in-a-look-magic moments. I can’t tell you how fucking splendid I found it to watch a PERFORMANCE. To see hard work and choices and a fucking character, with motivations and intricacies, and fascinating nuances. FUCK. And it felt like theatre. I don’t understand ballet but I feel like I kind of get it in that I get theatre. It’s theatrical. There is movement and honesty and magic and I felt like this film captures all that is wonderful about experincing ballet while exposing the sordid underbelly of the life-with-a-used-by-date of the over worked ballerina. The finale is mind-blowing, death and ecstasy and performance entangle. The performance is real. The end is real. Death is real. There is no artifice. But then again, it’s a film, so it is artifice. It’s a film on stage. It’s a stage on film. She is free. She nailed it. She is tragic. She is wonderful. She is gone. On other matters, there is a lesbian sex scene in the film, which I feel like I should mention cos how lesbians are portrayed in cinema is a one of the things I rant/care about. It sat a little uncomfortably with me cos I read somewhere it was thrown in a it token-ly in a lesbian-sex-will-get-the-fellas-interested-in-watching-our-film sort of way. I don’t know how true my source was but I went in thinking that’s what it was and it lived up to that. Portman’s character seemed straight and not like she was battling with a repressed lesbian identity. I’d have loved that to have been a facet of her struggle but it really wasn’t. The sex was about being liberated generally and not about her sexuality. She was largely asexual, and, if anything, attracted to the director. So I was a bit shitty. Though the scene was pretty hot. And did make lesbian sex look fun and viable which is important. So, I was asking my friend, who took me to the film, (who is straight) what she thought and she, who hadn’t read what I’d read, managed to construct a reading which worked and, so, if she can get that out of the scene, and it doesn’t sit superfluously and awkwardly with a cold reader, I can forgive it. I guess I’d just like it if they actually were lesbians and that was their (and our) one respite in cold vicious world of ambition and paranoia and performance. Anyway, my friends reading of the lesbian sex was that she needed to imagine sex with her friend/rival in order to make herself cum because she was too inhibited to masturbate. She had to be seduced in her fantasy in order to wank, and making love to the girl was a metaphor for making love to herself. I’m not sure I love lesbian sex standing in for wanking but it’s a viable and interesting reading of what ‘went down.’ (haha) Anyway, I also saw The Fighter. I liked it. I don’t have too much to say about it. My boss gave me cinema tickets that had to be used that day, so my brother and I walked down to George Street Hoyts (now Greater Union or Event or some-such shit but it used to be Hoyts and I can’t get out of the habit of calling it Hoyts) and saw the next film showing. I really wanted to see The King’s Speech cos everyone is banging on about it but it had already started. So we saw The Fighter, the performances are really good and sensitive, not too caricatured (though they do go for the odd laugh). I don’t really dig boxing but the story grabs you and holds you and you end up caring whether he wins or not and, well, basically, for the duration of the film, you suspend all your hang ups about violence and you’re a boxing fan… It is a good film. It is well made/shot/told. I don’t really feel like there is a particular reason people need to see it though. It’s just a good story told well. Nothing wrong with that. Great on a stinking hot summer day to escape into a picture theatre and watch a story. Definitely worth catching if you catch it…

3)Ruby Rose follow-up rant: So, December 2010, I ranted about Ruby Rose’s stupid FHM cover shoot. As it was contentious FMH followed it up with a page of tweets and fakebook comments from gruntled and disgruntled readers all specifically picked to justify their stupid/disgusting article. Good that they got that it was shit and felt the need to justify it I guess. Shithouse attempt (that they obviously thought was sufficient) at justifying it. I can’t be bothered doing a blow by blow of their inanity but just to get you cranky “We chose her because she’s interesting, sexy, talented, fucking cool. Her sexuality shouldn’t, and doesn’t, matter.” UM – YES IT DOES FUCKING MATTER! Fuck off FHM! Sexuality is relevant and real and very much a part of peoples identity. Don’t you dare reduce Rose to a bit of flesh to be admired/objectified… oh yeah, you already did. Fuckers. And like fuck her sexuality doesn’t matter. You talked about it enough in your article. You didn’t really examine the reasons that she’s cool or interesting did you? No, you asked her about sex, sex toys and how to please a woman. Fuck you FHM you’re full of shit.

4) The Millenium Trilogy and obnoxious people on non-monogamy rant: Okay, so people are all reading the Stieg Larsson books. They’re good page turners. The translation is a bit shoddy but the books are exciting. They’re also really feminist. There are heaps of really interesting 3D women characters on top of the fact the mysteries/crimes tend to focus on and explore violence against women and how fucked up it is. I’ve read a bit of crime fiction cos we had to do it as an HSC unit, and from what I’ve read, they’re a little bit different. We’ve had women heroes before, sure, but Miss Marple is no Lisbeth Salander. To my knowledge, I don’t think we’ve ever had such a complicated heroine. She’s an outsider, She’s young. She’s complicatedly impenetrable, cold even, un-trusting, careful. She’s brilliant, a genius, with a photographic memory. She’s super tough and, though tiny, can take on anyone. She’s androgynous and alternative and punk. She hangs out with hackers. She runs on her own sense and scheme of justice. She hates cops. She distrusts authority. She fights her own battles. She’s clever and cunning. She’s bisexual (though doesn’t specifically identify as such.) Um, I don’t really know how to describe her, but if you’ve read the books you know what I’m talking about. She’s incredible. Blomkvist is sorta the main hero but Salander steals the show. Point is, super amazing nuanced female character who kicks butt. Anyway, the bit I really like about the books is the way they depict non-monogamy. Personally, I’m monogamous. I really dig monogamy, but, I have some friends who are non-monogamous and I really get and respect what they’re doing and it was really nice to read stories with non-monogamous characters and have their desires explained in a way that made sense. Blomkvist and Erika have a really gorgeous relationship and Erika also has a really gorgeous relationship with her husband. There is full disclosure between all the characters, Erika and Blomkvist, Erika and her husband, Blomkvist and his other lovers. We hear about Erika’s husband’s bisexuality and how Erika isn’t really interested in women (damn!) Desires and different relationships are painted really beautifully. There is little jealousy or misunderstanding and where there is, the characters do their very best to take care of each other’s feelings. Everything is open, honest, full of love, and wonderful. So it gave me the shits when I watched the films and the relationship dynamics were completely left out. In the first film, you’d barely know that Erika and Blomkvist have a thing unless you’d read the books. Which is annoying cos I really love what they share. History, ideas, imagination, respect, lust. More generally I didn’t really like the films. They kind of dragged on. Wonder how Hollywood will go with their versions? I don’t hold high hopes… We’ll see…  Anyway, I thought I’d mix this rant with an I-got-into-a-frustrating-fight-with-a-moron-at-a-pub rant. This girl went through a huge amount of stupid arguments pissing on non-monogamy, but her main team-line seemed to be “You can’t tell me they don’t get jealous, everyone gets jealous.” Righto, well that’s sorted then. Everyone is jealous, If they’re not, they’re pretending and running around in relationships that are actually awful for them. She couldn’t open her mind for one second and accept that different people live differently. The bit that really shitted me was when she told me that non-monogamy isn’t right cos it spreads disease. I should have gone slowly with her and pointed out that monogamous people can sleep around in-between their holier-than-thou monogamous relationships and spread disease too. Not to mention the monogamous couples riddled with infidelity and zero disclosure (cos they’re not non-monogamous and therefore their playing isn’t sanctioned) I should have carefully explained to her how truth, honesty and careful negotiation that goes into most of the non-monogamous relationships I’ve encountered means that there is a great deal of safety involved in the sex that’s going on. Instead, I chose a throw away line in rebuttal. “Oh yeah?” I said, “So I suppose AIDS is a disease designed to punish gay people?” trying to highlight to her, her judgemental-ness and ignorance, and how dangerously close her non-monogamy-spreads-STDs quip was to the very real AIDS is punishing gay people train of thought that existed and was very much believed by hate filled fuck heads not so fucking long ago. As I should have foreseen, the comparison went completely over the cretin’s head and I got laid into for making the argument too personal and emotional. Ugh! “Oh you persecuted little gay! (cept I don’t think she said persecuted, that’s what she meant though, I’m making her more eloquent in this depiction cos I don’t remember her exact words) I have no problem with you being gay, you are taking this too personally, your sexuality is completely irrelevant.” To which the other people we were drinking with agreed and all set about calming me down. Cept she was the one choking up, and I was the one cool as a cucumber. Strange. Everyone in my life always seems to jump at the chance to stick a ‘drama queen’ label on me and it gives me the utter shits. So the AIDS comparison, which I thought rather apt, went over everyone’s heads and looked like an emotional, irrational little lesbian. All so fucking stupid. Anyway. I just think we shouldn’t judge other peoples relationship choices. We only know what works for ourselves. People like cretin-in-question need to stop being so self righteous, and open their eyes, hearts and minds and I need to stop talking about big issues to people I’ve just met.

Art Rant: This rant should be short and gushy. In January, I saw the Annie Leibovitz 1990-2005 exhibition that’s on at the MCA, It runs till April 26th. Seriously go it. It’s great. More ridiculous-has-a-soul relief for me! It was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster and I think it’s badly curated, or just not curated at all… I went from teared up to belly laughter with the turn of a head, which was disorienting and a bit annoying. It’s wonderful nonetheless. There is lots of silly, wonderful, sad, devastating, notalgic and powerful. Plus, It’s super 90s, which is really, really fun. I have to rant for a sec about “friendship” though.  The big description-y wall at the start of the exhibition describes Susan Sontag as Leibovitz’s “Long time friend” … FUCK. Long time friend? I’m so sick of lesbians being fucking invisible. We did the show sorta backwards cos we entered via the lift not the stairs so we read the wall towards the end. Anyway I said grrr to my friend and he was all “well, they mustn’t have been lovers then, cos the MCA wouldn’t hetro-fy them.” Urg! I had to give my naive friend a good talking to and couldn’t understand how he’d say that after having seen the billions of Sontag all through the show, looking so fucking obviously lover-ish. I used my stupid android phone to check and prove it to him and my quick search told me that the couple did grapple with definitions of their relationship and so I was a little less cranky but still shirty… anyway. It’s a great show regardless. The photos are incredible. I also went along to The First Emperor, which is showing at AGNSW till March 13. It’s great. And It’s beautifully and thoughtfully curated. It feels filmic and stage like all at once. Gorgeous, haunting, spooky, dreamy, wonderful. Yum. There are only 7 terracotta warriors but they’re beautiful and there are lots of other amazing pieces, plus less is more (a bit) and it’s super intimate with the 7 that are there. I also caught Ballet Russes which runs till March 20 at the National Gallery of Australia. I’m not really a costume person but I did really enjoy it. I felt the ghosts of past performances in the rags and there are heaps of gorgeous prints and photos too. Fun.

Anyway. That’s all I’m going to rant for now.

Feb is a short month so I’ll be back to rant about it soon.