David Aspden
One makes a film. One covers oneself in all manner of devices and stratagems to catch the eye - one makes a spectacle of oneself to catch attention. One is a draw, a spectacle, a freak.
You tie yourself to a tree. You hog the stage.
The photographs that come out - not the video - represent the summation of the deed.
Not the video.
One becomes, in the simple passive image, the beast, the matador, the thing on display - the formidable.
One is granted grace thus then. One becomes.
You don't do a show, don't turn up, die, breathe - but you've got the photographs, you've got the bloody photographs!
After spinning the Sellotape web you go home for Christmas - with the bloody photographs!
In its summation: the preening satyr stands, he has been here before, he was here before all the before, he is the template.
<Sticky Dickie Davis: the man who sought the world>
The film fails, is not made, but the preening satyr stands and sums up all that was available, was made.
The photograph.
In the end it was never really about anything else.
He was mute. He just stands. Behold!
No songs, no tunes, no words worthy. No performance, no dance.
Absolutely love the opening line “...one makes a spectacle of oneself to catch attention. One is a draw, a spectacle, a freak.” There’s an honesty about the self-absorption of self-portraiture. I get a sense of wanting to be worshipped like a mythical figure, a kind of transcendence through imagery.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks. It's an old story, the one above. This was an objective response to a history of performing - though few and far between - put into a series of vignettes, whereas the film itself took an ironic look at what it meant to 'show off' to one's peers - the world indeed - in order to gain attention, love, money, reward. I don't do it anymore - I've got that list! But the time I was doing it was one marked of sadness and grief. It's a sad time to draw attention away from the causes of that grief and project it onto role play. Would one not be better attending to the causes of that grief in the first place? I know not. But painting one's face yellow one is the Sun and the Moon combined - happiness and sadness. Why else would one cover one's face other than to obliterate the reality of what one is? I used to think that painting my face yellow 'was the real me'. Far from it. That fellow was hidden, deep, deep below.
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ReplyDeleteYour contribution has some common ground with that of Alex Billingham.
ReplyDeleteMonday: never heard of him.
DeleteTuesday: 'a trans fem disabled artist'. Really?! Mine's tongue-in-cheek but is his?!
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DeleteI meant Alex Billingham who contributed to this call https://foscofornio.blogspot.com/2023/04/from-ab_26.html
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