DIS Magazine https://dismagazine.com DIS Magazine is a digital media platform. It's on and offline projects examine art, fashion, music, and culture, constructing and supporting new creative practices. Thu, 05 Apr 2018 19:00:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.3 Dining with Reba Maybury https://dismagazine.com/discussion/85143/dining-with-reba-maybury/ Thu, 25 May 2017 16:37:01 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=85143 [read more »]]]> html,body{ background-image:url(http://dismagazine.com/uploads/2016/05/Dance.jpg); background-size:cover; background-position:center; background-attachment: fixed; }

Dining with Reba Maybury

Deconstructing power through the lens of a political dominatrix

Will Sheldon

Will Sheldon

In a time when many of us have unwittingly become brand ambassadors whereby our livelihoods directly or indirectly depend on the buying and selling of products, what does it mean to really want something? More specifically, to want something shameful, that you can’t purchase in a store. And to want it so much that you’re willing to pay a stranger to perform it.

Perhaps, since neoliberalism has restricted the ways in which we may feel loved, to be ‘hated’ has gained a new significance in our liking economy. To feel despised, to be called out for what we really are or feel to be, that is grotesque consuming beasts plowing through an endless flow of questionable content and objects.

To be force fed to the point of obese immobility, that’s all one average man nicknamed Humpty really wanted in Dining with Humpty Dumpty by Reba Maybury, founder of Wet Satin Press.

It could be said that Humpty is brave. Or at least he committed one brave act by jumping off the wall and daring to fulfill his fetishistic fantasy by seeking a domme, Mistress Rebecca, online. But it soon becomes clear that Humpty’s bravery is more so a bumbling ignorance and an infuriating lack of self-consciousness as to the motives and implications of his extreme feeding fetish, which he asserts can only be fulfilled by a woman. Meanwhile he doesn’t believe in Mistress Rebecca’s feminism or question the privilege and entitlement he was born into.

Our domme-narrator becomes frustrated by the disconnect between Humpty’s female supremacy fetish and his backwards conception of gender and social justice in daily life. Over the course of several meetings, she makes the unprecedented attempt to dom Humpty into reconsidering his conservative Tory values, but the plan fails. Often, the more one’s fantasies oppose one’s personal core values or those of your society, the more one is turned on. But if this is Humpty’s conundrum, he doesn’t let on.

The life of a fetishist can be a sad one. For the embarrassing and shameful nature of many fetishes, which often contributes to the erotic satisfaction they can bring, can alienate one not only from one’s peers, but from oneself. And so it is that while Humpty provides an example of the sort of willful ignorance of those in positions of power in society and the complacent fear that stops many from thinking beyond the narrow borders of their own subjectivity, he also embodies the tragic loneliness of those whose most deep-seated sexual fantasies can rarely come true, and for whom the internet has proven an illusory tool. In this, Humpty can be seen as beautiful, even as he is being pelted with eggs by an angry leftist female mob by the end of Mistress Rebecca’s tale. As Mistress Rebecca asserts, ‘vulnerability is beautiful in it’s …ungendered beauty.’

Below is an exchange between Reba Maybury and Ada O’Higgins, discussing the major themes and questions that arise from Dining with Humpty Dumpty.

Ada O’Higgins: I heard the person who you were loosely inspired by for Dining with Humpty Dumpty was angry at your depiction of him and was threatening to sue, and sent you a death threat while you were here in NY for your reading at Bridget Donahue.

Reba Maybury: All fiction is usually based on the author’s experience, and every experience is skewed by each person’s lens, so there’s this very fundamental argument of literature and writing which I suppose I’m currently having to deal with. I have fictionalized every discerning element of the various personalities that I’ve based this character on so there isn’t much that they can do.

AO: There’s nothing unethical or wrong about what you did; especially given the nature of your Sub/Dom relationship, you’d think they would have more of a sense of humor about your depiction of them.

RM: Absolutely, and I think one of the reasons I wrote about one of these people in particular is because they actually showed themselves to be a terrible person. The person he first presented himself as ended up being an illusion. He said he was a female supremacist, but it turns out he was more of a men’s rights activist. He’s a character that, for me, exemplifies a lot of stereotypes about white, cis, straight, corporate masculinity. I fictionalized his character and used it to explore issues that I see in our society. The character has a humiliation fetish and what could be more humiliating than having your fetish written about by your domme?

AO: Speaking of the discrepancy between his daily views and his fetish, I was thinking about how common that is: fetishes that go against one’s own views. Like women with a rape fetish, or people who want to be racially abused for their ethnicity, for example.

RM: The most common, extreme desire that I’ve encountered on fetish sites is South-Asian men looking to meet white women who will dominate them. When I talk to them, they want me to be their ‘white supremacist goddess’. When I refuse and tell them my mother’s actually Pakistani, they get completely thrown off and embarrassed, but then weirdly turned on by me being mixed. The world of fetishes is endless… Sex is ultimately the closest we can come to true escapism isn’t it?

AO: Yes, erotica is one of the few places where it’s possible to safely explore otherwise social taboos and consensually perform otherwise unethical or illegal behavior.

RM: That’s where the often very real stereotype of the submissive feminist comes from, some of us are sick of fighting every day for our rights, so in bed we want to let go of control and be dominated. It makes sense. That’s also why a lot of these men want to be submissive, because they’re taught not to be in daily life. But the problem with the character of Humpty is that his fetish is a lifestyle fetish. He wants it to take over his life, he wants it to completely control him. He doesn’t ever want to switch off.

AO: Within the realm of sexuality there is arguably nothing wrong with these fetishes. It’s a way for people to release these feelings. Why is it different with Humpty, what is unacceptable about his lifestyle fetish?

RM: I don’t think his fetish is unacceptable, but more simply that it possesses uncomfortable social juxtapositions. He proved himself to be very judgmental and right wing, but he was trying to metamorphose himself into an obese person, a characteristic that’s unfortunately most often associated with poverty. It’s also entangled with sloth, laziness, and greed. The feeding fetish was complicated because in his case, he needs a woman to do it, he can’t feed himself. So he’s reducing these very visceral stereotypes into a fetish: he’s greedy, he’s lazy, he needs feeding, he wants his stomach stroked–he needs a woman to do that for him. It’s a fetish of absolute pure indulgence that only he can get pleasure out of. And obviously his problem is that he cannot find a woman who he can enjoy this lifestyle with. When we think of the feeding fetish, we think of men feeding women, which in a way is overtly sexist, because it’s about making a woman lose her self-esteem and literally not be able to move, so that she’s completely dependent on a man who controls her. But there are less women who would want to make a man fat, because women more often seek independent men. There is also the issue over how overweight women and men are treated with intrinsic difference over their physicalities, which is something that doesn’t bother or affect Humpty. Considering that Humpty declares that he is a ‘female supremacist’ against his out and proud political values as a Tory, it would be grotesque for Mistress Rebecca to take him seriously.

AO: There are so many examples of impossible or extremely difficult fetishes to fulfill, like cuckolding. In some cases, could it be that people seek complex scenarios that are difficult to achieve because they like longing for something unattainable? People become obsessed with an unattainable scenario, and, as in your book, you begin to wonder if they really do want it after all. What if they were just using this obsession to fill a void?

RM: Obsession cures boredom, and there is a lot to be bored about if you accept our neoliberal reality. I feel like Humpty’s fixation to get fat is just an unconscious rebellion from the utter banality of his faux creative, corporate and ultra comfortable life. Some men feel like they can have whatever they want. They can just pay for it. He thought ‘oh I can pay a dominatrix and get whatever I want’. Whereas how many women have the confidence to fulfill their fetish in this fashion?

AO: And he did get what he wanted, in a way, didn’t he?

RM: Well, he couldn’t put the weight on… [laughs]

AO: That’s so funny. You mentioned that in his fetish scenario the pleasure was all for him, and I was wondering, do you think a dominatrix in a paid Sub/Dom relationship should have pleasure?

RM: Being a domme, or any kind of sexual interaction, is pleasurable when it’s engaging, and you respect each other, and there’s a thirst. And that can occur, intellectually as well as physically, with or without payment. Mistress Rebecca does get pleasure from Humpty, but it’s a purely anthropological one; ultimately she feels like she’s being put on a maternal pedestal, which isn’t sexy to her personally.

AO: The narrator talks about her disgust and repulsion for Humpty a lot, and it becomes clear that her performance of repugnance to fulfill Humpty’s humiliation fetish coincides with actual real revulsion on the part of Mistress Rebecca. So the role of the submissive can be humiliating not only within the parameters of the performed erotic scene, but outside of it in that the sub’s desires are shameful. But the position of the dom can be equally humiliating: the dom is getting off on performing power over someone else. So both parties are revealing their weaknesses, their insecurities.

RM: The sub has all of the power and that is the conflating irony of the whole scenario.

AO: True! In the book the situation is ambiguous because the narrator describes their power over Humpty, but Humpty is the one paying the narrator, and the story revolves around enacting his particular fetish.

Will Sheldon

Will Sheldon

RM: What I wanted to get at is that being a dominatrix is performance. This idea of power as a domme is rehearsed, you know what these men want to hear, and when you first meet them you work out how they treat you, what the language is, and you figure out what they are turned on by, and you have some phrases in the back of your head to begin the initial conversations and see what they are into. But ultimately that performance has to end. Often the dominatrix doesn’t talk about their own experience besides being this totem of mystery and steely perfection. You expect a dominatrix to have this inflated ego because she is so adored, but the submissive adores the performance of a woman and not the tangible nuances of her personality. I believe in the absolute honesty of the female experience and that includes the unveiling of the different emotional layers of the sex worker. Stereotypes exist to be destroyed.

AO: I really enjoyed how Mistress Rebecca reveal her own vulnerability and disillusionment with men, separately from her experience with Humpty.

RM: That was really important, to counter the image of the dominatrix as always strong and powerful. Women are always needed to perform different characters. We think of dominatrixes as these flamboyant, empowered women, almost creations of a gay male gaze. The experiences I had while writing this book had me confused about my own romantic experiences and how I felt as a woman who enjoys intimacy with men. And also how men have viewed me, being a dominatrix, lecturer and model. How being a ‘strong, successful woman’ can be isolating, and how as the feminine – you can’t really win. Just because someone is a dominatrix doesn’t mean she doesn’t get heartbroken and humiliated. Being a dominatrix is a performance, but what we have when the performance ends is what truly matters.

AO: How do you navigate your own feminist values and your work as a domme? Do you question whether it can be an entirely feminist act, given that the men in these relationships are the ones with financial power who dictate the parameters of your encounters?

RM: Men have all the money in anything you do. That’s my conclusion. The likelihood that anyone who is reading this has a male boss, or even if they don’t have a male boss, that their boss’s boss is a man, is very high. Money and power is still controlled by men, whether you’re a waitress and a man is not tipping you properly or a professor being patronized by a male student, there are so many examples of the gendered aspect of economics. And it’s all coming from the same thing.

AO: Women’s bodies are constantly dissected and women are ridiculed for their looks, and men aren’t, or it doesn’t matter if they are. Look at any man in power. It gets them more respect to be unattractive, because it puts the focus on their abilities rather than their appearance.

RM: I teach politics in fashion programs at a London University, and I spend a lot of time fixated on the nuances of the dressed body. I’m hyper-aware of how women are constantly being watched and that’s a theme of the book, who’s watching and who’s being seen. While I was writing I would try to internalize how men in public would react to me or my friends, on the tube, in a bar, walking down the street and so on. Interactions that, as women, we often block out because if we acknowledged every stare we get on a daily basis, we would feel crazy. Very Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion. With Humpty I wanted to explain how women feel when they’re being watched. So I did this by describing the mundane nuances of how long his sideburns are, or how thin his lips are or how horrible his leather jacket is. There are parts of the book where I describe him looking at Mistress Rebecca, but the point is to turn the whole thing on it’s head. When women look in their closet and think ‘Oh god I have nothing to wear’, they’re not saying they have nothing to wear, they’re asking themselves ‘what type of woman am I going to be today, what type of woman am I going to be treated as today?’ Men don’t have to worry about that, they can wear the same jeans and shirt every day, but a woman has to ask herself ‘Am I going to look strict, sexy, or girly today?’ and ‘When I go to work today, is this person going to judge me if my skirt is above my knee?’ In the book I want to analyze the intricacies and the aesthetics of how men dress themselves-not all men-I’m talking about this universal man who wears jeans with a fade on the thighs and an ugly leather jacket or blazer. There are so many articles in magazines about what type of eyebrows women should have. But why is no one talking about the length of a man’s sideburns? How often do men think about their sideburns, and how often do women think about their eyebrows? Time is gendered.

AO: I would never judge a woman for having a humiliation fetish, or a gay person who gets off on being treated in a homophobic way. But I do think twice when a man has a fetish that’s misogynistic at its core. How should we navigate this question, is it rig htto have this double standard? Are all fetishes created equally?

RM: All sexuality is acceptable if it’s consensual and respectful, and that’s what it comes down to. The reason Humpty’s fetish is deconstructed is because it’s actually really harmful. It operates under the facade of loving women and wanting to empower them, but actually he reveals that he thinks it’s ‘so difficult to be a white man right now’. And because of that he’s a terrible human being. He initially insulted me, then all people of color and all women with that statement. That leads me to wonder if there’s anything more repugnant than using a political view as a fantasy and not abiding by that view in one’s life. Like you say, we all have mad fantasies. But there’s a need for responsibility and maturity. I feel like I’m at school talking to kids about sex now. [laughs] If sex is ruthlessly selfish like Humpty’s was, then it’s obviously dangerous.

AO: Why so? How would you explain this to Humpty, who seems baffled by the possibility that his fetish is problematic.

Will Sheldon

Will Sheldon

RM: Of course fetish is private but within the book’s context Humpty’s aim was to be constantly catered by the emotional labour of a woman for his pleasure. It shows a deep lack of respect or care for other people. I based Humpty’s character on this universal male stereotype. I met one of the people who inspired Humpty’s character, in January 2016 (pre-Brexit and pre-Trump) and began writing this shortly afterwards. When Trump won I realized that I had been writing a portrait of the type of man who did actually vote for Trump without realizing it. On the outside he might look a bit liberal, he might wear Converse, he might listen to Radiohead or Talking Heads, but actually he is harboring this deep-seated, silent resentment against women and racial diversity. I was spending time with this man, and writing this book loosely based on his character. It’s about this person who on the outside looks liberal enough, and may behave in modest ways in public. but inside has deeply terrifying views. That’s why we had Brexit and you have Trump. It’s shocking to liberals, but those feelings are shockingly real and exist within the most unchallenged of the Western population. Mundanity is political and Mistress Rebecca is desperate for Humpty to really feel something real.

AO: There’s a frustration in the book about how to face this person who is so different from her, in terms of values and thought-processes. It’s courageous, but also idealistic, that she tries to change his views. How do you think people should confront peers or public figures with values based in prejudice and disrespect? It’s quite a sensitive thing to do, that can veer into it’s own form of condescension.

RM: It’s a very difficult thing to do, and I think you have to be as positive as you can, and not jump to conclusions when you meet people. If you go around thinking every white man you meet is going to degrade women, for example, you’re going to have a nervous breakdown. And that’s not even the case, and I’ve tried to convey with the book as well. Mistress Rebecca loves men, but, like everyone she has also had some shit experiences. And the book is about her frustration, feeling isolated by this patriarchal system. She wants to have beautiful experiences with men, but unfortunately she’s not having them. In terms of confronting people, I see my American friends all fighting with one another over the smallest bigoted nuances rather than looking at the bigger picture. I understand how emotional the rise of the contemporary far right is, it’s a time of high stress and we all want someone to blame – but accusing your art school educated friend of minute appropriation isn’t going to alter the minds of fascists into compassion. For me, this is a book about power more than men. Trying to understand how we deconstruct power. When I say men I mostly mean men in power. We have to work out what those are, as well. I don’t want to be judgemental, I want to be open and strike up conversation with people. I think conversation is the most important thing, physical conversation. As the narrator says in the book, the only way you can create a decent political opinion is to talk to as many people as you can, from as many different backgrounds, and then figure out what matters. And that’s why one should try and converse with rich cis white men, not just point fingers at them.

AO: There’s so much liberal hate and anger, especially here in the U.S, towards conervatives who elected President Trump. Anger is an important vehicle for change, but it’s hard to gage how far anger will get you.

RM: With Humpty, you could think ‘Oh God it’s ridiculous he feels victimized for being a white man.’ But obviously he does feel like that. And it’s infuriating, because he’s so blind, but if someone’s been born into never having to really prove themselves, because of their race, the gender they identify with, and their social class, if they start to feel that things are not being given to them as easily, they are going to react. And this is one of the reasons why Trump won and Brexit happened. People thought they had this birthright to privilege and saw it changing and got scared, and it’s happened in this very insidious way. No one knew this was happening because we live in a society where we accept men not expressing themselves and so many men seem so normalized in their identical behaviors and aesthetics, but these feelings of victimization have been bubbling under the surface over the last decade. Anyone can go into the voting booth without actually having to have any discussions about how they were going to vote. The anonymous but ever present white man’s power should never be taken for granted. This is expressed with Humpty: he works in a superficially creative corporate job, he likes Patti Smith and Blondie, but he also secretly thinks Black people are stealing his jobs.

AO: I don’t know if Humpty was very humanized in the book [both laugh] but it was interesting to spend any time with him at all.

RM: Humpty is a caricature, a symbol. In the book, Mistress Rebecca asks why there isn’t a fetish for a kind person who is just themselves. The problem is, when men want to be babied and wear diapers, for example, that’s also a fetish for a woman being put into the stereotype of the mother. So we can either be cold, hard bitches––the strict, disciplinarian mother–– or doting, babying mothers. So we’re rarely just a person.

AO: But men have that as well, sadly, the pressure to be a Dad for example.

RM: Look after the family, pay for dinner – paying for everything! There are terrible complexities for a lot of men, men who don’t want to fit into male stereotypes. There’s a line in the book that says ‘vulnerability is beautiful in it’s ungendered beauty’, and that’s something I really believe in. We should all enjoy being vulnerable, and if men started being more vulnerable we would have many less problems.

AO: As bell hooks discusses in her book on Men and Love, and how men need to be allowed to be more emotional in order to free themselves from the constraints of patriarchy.

RM: It’s absolutely true, and I’ve written about that quite a bit, when I discuss Mistress Rebecca being emotional with men, and being rejected, and how she’s been attracted to these subversive characters and it’s because she’s been sold this idea of the rock star or noise musician who exerts themselves on stage and therefore must be this emotional, tactile and sensitive person with a passion for progression. But actually a lot of these men are not that way, they are actually quite politically stagnant. It’s this false sense of security that one can have when dealing with creative men, where they have this explosion of emotion but the rest of the time are cut off, self interested and cold.

AO: Did you enjoy putting the book together?

RM: I loved it maybe even more so because I never thought I would write a book. It took me about a year, but I felt like now was the right time for it to come out. The book has morphed into this character that is partly to blame for the current political situation we are in. Regardless of the fetish or feminist aspects of the book, I feel that this book has unconsciously explored a person who exemplifies the mess we’re in now.

AO: What do you think the future is for this man, and for these men? What is their place? As a white person I question the place of my voice in cultural discourse. Similarly what is the place for men?

RM: I have this conversation with a lot of Americans. Britain is horrifically colonial in it’s violent history, but everything in America is even more extreme but more open to progressive conversation because it’s apartheid means you don’t have a choice but to talk. I hate the idea, when I speak with my white female friends, that they think they shouldn’t do anything. I think anything that you do is valid, as long as it brings in accepting and compassionate ideas to other people. Your voice is important as long as you think it’s going to empower other people (without patronising them), because there are a lot of people out there who have huge platforms and are only thinking of themselves – more than ever now with social media.

AO: Did you feel like Humpty actually learned something or changed following your exchange? He said he did, but do you think he really did?

RM: No, not at all. I think it made him angry and made him feel like he had the right to be more prone to his views.

Will Sheldon

Will Sheldon

AO: In the book the narrator wonders why fetishes so often center around abusing people and unequal power dynamics. Since you practice being a dom, why do subs seek someone who is emotionally detached do you think?

RM: People want to be able to project all their shit onto someone else – that is animalistic. Being a sex worker is like being a caregiver. It’s emotional support, like therapy. Some people get a massage, some people want to be cuddled. Some people get tied up and some people want good head.

AO: Did you encounter the fact that people who work with sexuality are less respected than others? Especially women.

RM: People think sex is just pulp fiction, sensational, and that you’re just trying to grab attention and expand your ego and claim that you’re sexy. Whereas for me my interest in sex comes from knowing how deeply rooted it is in gender dynamics. Male sexuality is such a huge drive behind the patriarchy, that if I can explore those issues, maybe we can deconstruct a lot of other things too. I also realized lots of women have terrible sex, and we can only change that when we understand the sexual content men are consuming, how they see women. Sex is a political issue. And I’m not a hippy. I am very British. I don’t believe in star signs. I’m a very sensual person but not spiritual. I’m trying to approach sex from a sociological perspective. It’s bullshit when people don’t take sex seriously. It clearly still comes from this draconian obsession with sex being shameful.Queen Victoria died over a century ago but puritanism is still so embedded into us and we’ve got to learn how to throw it off.

AO: Men, because they have less shame and allowed to explore their sexuality, within the narrow path of patriarchal masculinity that is set out for them, can asses what their desires and fetishes and sexual triggers are, and then they can seek them. But women, not as much.

RM: Womens sex drives are just as high as men’s. We’ve just been repressed into not being able to explore them. We’ve had to suppress our ability to feel sexual pleasure because we associate sex with danger and shame, and seeking sex is dangerous for a woman, where it only is fractionally for a man.

Dining with Humpty Dumpty is available for purchase at Claire de Rouen in Europe and Shoot The Lobster in New York.

Intro Ada O’Higgins
All drawings Will Sheldon
Copy editing Aran Atsuo Shanmugaratnam

]]>
Cowgirls of Color https://dismagazine.com/discussion/85119/cowgirls-of-color/ Thu, 11 May 2017 14:52:56 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=85119

COWGIRLS OF COLOR

June Canedo and Tess Herbert capture Cowgirls of Color, a competitive cowgirl group based in Maryland

– June Canedo

The Cowgirls
Sandra Dorsey
Kisha Bowles
Selina Brown
Brittaney Logan

The Trainer
Dr. Ray Charles Lockamy

Selina Brown, Sandra Dorsey, Brittany Logan and Kisha Bowles

Selina Brown, Sandra Dorsey, Brittaney Logan and Kisha Bowles

Selina Brown

Selina Brown

Brittany Logan

Kisha Bowles

Sandra Dorsey

Sandra Dorsey

Brittany Logan

Brittaney Logan

Sandra Dorsey and Selina Brown

Sandra Dorsey and Selina Brown

Kisha Bowles

Kisha Bowles

Photographer: June Canedo
Stylist: Tess Herbert
MUA: Monica Bethea

]]>
Bump Dis – Quay Dash https://dismagazine.com/disco/mixes/85110/bump-dis-quay-dash/ Mon, 03 Apr 2017 11:08:51 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=85110 QUAY HEADER

Bump Dis – Quay Dash

Trap mix by rap goddess Quay Dash
Listen here.

]]>
QUAY HEADER

Bump Dis – Quay Dash

Trap mix by rap goddess Quay Dash
Listen here.

]]>
DROWN IT https://dismagazine.com/disco/mixes/85095/drown-it-sadaf/ Thu, 23 Mar 2017 15:23:05 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=85095 drownitcover

DROWN IT

DROWN YOUR SORROWS, DROWN IT OUT WITH SOUND, WASH YOUR HANDS CLEAN OF IT.
Listen here.

]]>
drownitcover

DROWN IT

DROWN YOUR SORROWS, DROWN IT OUT WITH SOUND, WASH YOUR HANDS CLEAN OF IT.
Listen here.

]]>
Moonbow – BAD DRe-AMz Mix https://dismagazine.com/disco/mixes/84769/moonbow-bad-dreamz/ Fri, 17 Mar 2017 12:59:47 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84769 mooonbow

Moonbow – BAD DRe-AMz Mix

Artwork by Francesca Riley
Listen here.

]]>
mooonbow

Moonbow – BAD DRe-AMz Mix

Artwork by Francesca Riley
Listen here.

]]>
Byproducts of Development https://dismagazine.com/discussion/84906/byproducts-of-development/ Tue, 07 Mar 2017 17:53:27 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84906 [read more »]]]>
Byproducts of Development
A conversation between Hamed Bukhamseen & Abdullah Al-Mutairi

One in a series of videos by Al-Mutairi for his upcoming solo show “Byproducts of Development.”
Soundtrack: Shotta Goin Under, Abby’s Pre-Party Smoothie Blend

“Byproducts of Development” utilizes the form of fan labour known as “vidding” to narrate inhabitant’s visceral experience of hyper-development in Kuwait through the use of personal, popular, and found media.

Focusing on the environmental and social impact industrial expansion has had on bodies and identity, these “fan flicks” attempt to contextualize the physical experience of severe economic changes. They aim to theorize the shift towards a specific “global empathy” that has emerged through digital connectivity and the emotional resonance youth find with corporate produced alt-media from the west.

Vidding, the term used for the practice of creating music videos using multiple media sources, grew out of a thirst for representation in the American media industry. Fandoms splice existing media to project their own emotional reading of scenarios, often heightening femme and queer undertones not often represented in popular media.

The prosumer impulse to consume and regurgitate media, though a global phenomenon, can be seen most clearly in regions where a phase of rapid development coincided with democratic access to multimedia technology; reflecting an aspirational desire to embody a recognizable modernity that pushes against, while simultaneously reinstating, empire.

Hamed Bukhamseen (co-curator of Kuwait’s Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia) met with artist Abdullah Al-Mutairi to discuss his videos and their relation to suburban development and environmental pollution in Kuwait, the physiological and psychological repercussions of “modernity”, and emotionality’s relation to digital empire.

A fan translation of My Immortal by Evanescence, containing lyrics reflecting on isolation and sadness.

Hamed Bukhamseen: The mechanisms of urban planning and development in North American cities, and elsewhere, have followed calculated principles with sometimes sinister intentions: infrastructure is used as a tool to segregate portions of the population and areas are purposely designated to achieve the same goal.1

It could be said that cities in the Gulf seem to have taken these cues from such metropoli and implemented them to a degree during their rapid development in the mid-20th century onwards. However, the direct physiological and psychological impact on the populace that resides in these cities has seldom been taken into consideration outside of academic writing. That’s what I find kind of fascinating in this initial video.

Abdullah Al-Mutairi: There is a certain empathy in design that seems absent here, in art as well as in architecture. Empathy for the people. It’s rare to find a creative here in Kuwait who creates with empathy for those around them and their surroundings instead of for an abstract “global” audience. Sometimes creatives would like to think their work is global when it’s just self-exotification, and they act dumb when class appropriation is brought up…

HB: Empathy is a vital characteristic in the creative fields. A lack of understanding of your audience/client implies a certain imposition of an ideal that doesn’t necessarily resonate or relate to context. I’m thinking about the early growth of Gulf cities, Kuwait in particular, and how the suburbanization of the populace truly affected the sense of kinship and structure of society. 2
The inner suburbs closer to the once historic downtown would be associated with wealthier segments of society, while those on the city fringe would be relegated to tribal Bedouin communities and members of lower socioeconomic status. An almost literal socio-spatial interpretation of the city’s planning could be garnered based off of concentric proximity to the urban center.

AAM: I was just speaking with my Dad about this––the distribution of land and how certain areas on the outskirts became what they are now. There were certain feelings I wanted validated and rumors I wanted confirmed, for example that tribal families were pushed to the margins from the beginning! We know this to be true to some extent, but I’m also wary of applying certain social analyses rooted in the West to here. It’s so easy to self-victimize, or fall into conspiratorial thinking that isn’t based on lived reality. What came out of the conversation with my Dad was that, actually, in the beginning, residential areas were distributed in a pretty utopian way… on a first come first serve basis.

An influential fan flick for Al-Mutairi from 2006

HB: It’s true that some residential areas in the country were originally designated for particular segments of society. However for the most part, the suburban areas of Kuwait were built with utopian ideals in mind, and planning authorities attempted to have various socio-economic strata live amongst one another.

The eventual concentration of wealthy families in certain areas such as the districts closer to the downtown contributed to higher market value due to more municipal attention being directed to these places.

The fact that tribal communities would live in the exterior suburbs of the city is partly due to the late transition to a sedentary lifestyle in place of a nomadic one. These areas are not as cared for as others; the lack of public spaces and proper updated infrastructure in these districts is evidence of a degree of marginalization compared to more affluent areas.

AAM: The wealthier an area is, the more it seems it’s inhabitants take on a “working class” image, which isn’t clocked or called out because class isn’t really openly discussed in Kuwait. It’s interesting how “authenticity” is playing out in the region, it’s as if a society isn’t modern until it parodies itself and it’s own heritage. Some of this exotification came from initial urbanization plans, but the conversation around urban development has remained between western architects and local authorities who want to project a specific image. It’s similar to Brooklyn… the glorification of a dusty past by people who can afford to gentrify an area. I was really confused by this growing up; how “bedu” was basically used as a slur against us kids from tribal families while the romantic image of the ’nomad’ in the Gulf has been increasingly appropriated alongside urbanization.

HB: The idealization of the nomad is basically an attempt to connect rapid development in the Gulf to its context by relating to a specific history/culture and precedent. The Bedouin being the emblematic symbol of the “noble savage” who was willing to leave his nomadic lifestyle yet still retain this “machismo” associated with the culture. It is here you begin to draw a direct link between populace characteristics and place.

In our previous discussions you also mentioned that these fringe communities and suburbs in fact lie in close proximity to oil processing plants… which contributes to further inadvertent marginalization through exposure to toxins that are pumped into the land, air and water.

AAM: That was actually what I was first looking into while conceptualizing this show- how the residential areas on the fringes of the city housed a lot of tribal and lower income Kuwaiti’s, and the impact such proximity to pollutants could have on mind and body. I had a neat, naive theory that petroleum produced plastics change the body. I was reacting to the bisphenol A hysteria I recently became aware of that suggests ingesting the chemical “feminizes boys”. I was relating this to when I was a one-year-old in Sabahiya after the Gulf war, breathing in the black oil fire clouds drifting up from the the fields. There’s no direct scientific link yet, but I believe pollution definitely has an impact on physiology and subsequently on the shaping of the self and identity…

HB: Plastics and waste become a recurring symbol throughout your work, which references the byproducts of development associated with fossil fuel economies and their relative environments.

An abused term coined by your colleague, Sophia Al-Maria, flashes before me: Gulf Futurism.

AAM: A lot of people misunderstood the term, I think. It became a scapegoat for people looking to belittle the entire Gulf under the guise of “critique”. The Khaleej, like anywhere else, is socially complex and contains systemic oppression that we all need to fight against without a doubt. People choose to see the wealth in the region, it’s pretty hard to miss, and generalize based on that, when in reality a huge percentage of Khaleeji’s (Gulf citizens) are poor. Sophia Al-Maria’s work was a revelation to me; not least because of the fact that she also comes from a tribal background, which is rare to find in the local art scene. What resonated with me in her work was specifically her likening of mobile technology to time-travel and her focus on the visceral experience of rapid modernization, in particular the experience of those masses who might not have known what the hell was going on or had the power to change it.

HB: A fantastic pairing that was made in this “Going Under” preview for your show dealt with human growth and the city’s growth. A pairing that calls to mind the significant amount of Kuwaitis obsessed with physique.

AAM: It’s not just Kuwait, this is just my personal experience of the phenomenon. It’s everywhere. Drastic changes would impact anyone anywhere, the only thing specific to the region is the dramatic shift in overall wealth. Increase in wealth leads to increase in free time. The issue is we don’t have the infrastructure or knowledge of what to do with this time besides “self-care”. What is lacking is empathy and a real understanding of the toll development has, and continues to have, on communities and on bodies; the impact it’s had on self-image. What did people think was going to happen when 2nd-gen wealth coincided with a newly accessible internet and an information overload? “Self-actualizing” comes off as a really violent act to me, but I can see why it’s deemed necessary by some people. I think this obsession with image, both social and personal, is connected to post-imperial anxiety and the strive to achieve and represent “modernity”. I understand why those around me choose to shoot up hormones to achieve a particular ideal instead of challenge it. It’s superficial, but real.

HB: Challenging seems to be the entire premise of this effort. Particularly how you see hyperdevelopment reinforce a specific hypermasculinity, and how any sort of ambiguity veering away from this paragon would seem to be an affront to society. The anxiety of ambiguity is one of the central themes you are dealing with. You hypothesize that those who do not fit the prescribed mold have to conform or resort to different places – virtual places – to find things to relate to.

Slash fiction is a subgenre of fan labor that pairs characters of a similar sex, often male, within or sometimes across franchise fandoms. In this case: Radar and Draco + Harry

AAM: The more I think about it, the more it seems there is a link between feelings of vulnerability and identification with a “western” counterculture. Vulnerability is something typically pushed aside as unnecessary or even embarrassing; but it’s how people learn to empathise. If a person doesn’t receive emotional affirmation in their environment, in our case a rapidly changing environment, they’re going to look for that mirroring elsewhere. I grew up with the internet, so I can testify to the satisfaction a person can get from thinking they found “their people”, in my case gender ambiguous Emo culture and fan-fiction. I really think the internet was a turning point in how global masses of people learned empathy, how youth learned to relate and identify. With this coming video series I’m trying to validate certain prosumer impulses within me while also being cognizant of how this type of media came to be in the first place. Fan flick culture really had an impact on how I see media. The realization that you could project your own readings onto existing media or construct a theory, which is what I’m doing here. It takes a certain sensitivity to tap into undertones or reconfigure media in a way to portray how you see things. An “outsider” sensitivity–– often mistaken as weakness–– becomes a means of survival.

HB: Masculinity is the ideal whilst sensitivity and empathy are signs of weakness? Sounds almost Machiavellian.

AAM: I hated that book, The Prince. It’s an example of how certain “sources”, comming from their own precise place and time, influence thinking and shift it away from alternatives. I read somewhere that The Prince is cited as a “must read” by many nation state leaders. I’ve always been interested in “pop” influences in the region because it’s so telling. Like how SIA is now sort of the posterchild of emotional strife in any connected city; she perfected the formula! What was thought of as counter culture is now pop. I guess to sum up my thinking here: there was a period when the internet opened up alternate possibilities for existence in the Gulf that sort of puttered out over time due to a “global media” takeover; “global” meaning an English speaking individual following western theory. You have kids in the gulf identifying as queer now, and that’s amazing, but then they’re also, consciously or unconsciously, acting condescendingly to those who exist outside this hegemonic information hell that separates their “queerness” from local forms of non-hetero existence. All these alternative existences being sucked into a singular form. I’m not trying to point fingers, it’s just how things are. After all, this interview is being conducted in English rather than Arabic; I’m definitely part of this process.. It’s not reversible. I’m just wondering if it’s possible to cultivate any sort of non-binary existence outside of the “non-form” forms all over Instagram rooted in western thought. “Queer” is so slippery since it’s very structure denies any root when it definitely has roots, and it’s so alluring now.

HB: Such terminology is intrinsically linked to the language of communication which has been something that we, as a generation, are grappling with. Communicating in English can mean catering to a “global” audience or mean that we are seeking validity from the outside. In this work you make it a point to provide subtitles, why is that?

AAM: Communication and language are really important to me; even more so now that I came to realize a lot of people just sample things and disregard the circumstances that allowed that work to come into existence. I wanted to focus on the significance of certain forms within a larger structure. I made an intentional decision to make work for the people I grew up with, using the forms familiar to us to discuss relevant experiences instead of pandering to outsiders with Arab drag. Intent is very important to me. I refused to translate previous videos, but in this case I included the subtitles to emphasize the lyrical meaning behind these songs that were originally in English; how this seemingly docile mirroring actually changes how people relate to others socially and culturally. A lot of these songs resonated with me and others because they are so easily understood in their embarrassing rawness. It’s easy to latch onto that emotional satisfaction and take on that culture wholesale when those around you don’t understand how the times changed how we see ourselves . if you look through Youtube you’ll find all types of fan translations, that are completely raw and invisible at the same time. I’m interested in this fan labour, in these mirror distortions of media that mark larger societal changes.

HB: Going back to the sampling of media, you draw inspiration from various sources and digitally/physically restructure them into a narrative. One of the works you mentioned you draw a significant amount of inspiration from is El Diesel by Thani Al-Suwaidi…

AAM: That novel was ahead of it’s time. I wish it was easier to find in Arabic… This was my first literary encounter with a non-binary khaleeji character that was treated with empathy and not used as an example. What I took note of was the naivety of the protagonist “El-Diesel”; they were the source and manifestation of all these changes but were themselves oblivious to this, they were just living their life! There are multiple layers to the story and I found myself constructing a similar allegory using my own personal archive of footage to narrate a larger story of regional development. I wanted to use this footage to mark a certain moment of existence but also to avoid the problem of “representation”; to consciously construct a theory of development while keeping in mind the impact, and repercussions of, the image. Honestly, I really just wanted to put video to music.

HB: Could you expand on the significance of repurposing existing material in your work? Originally through digital media, and physically through sculpture in the coming exhibition

AAM: We’re all so wasteful. I’ve always felt bad about buying new things, whatever they were, but especially art supplies.. The majority of materials in the coming show I found at friday market, the central flea market in Kuwait, or on the streets. I collected a bunch of discarded broken glass from a restaurant complex popping up near my house. A sign of the times. I want to approach the local perception of art and challenge it. I think there’s a difference between using knowledge to condescendingly come off as “in the know” and trying to have a conversation.. I’m trying to start a conversation here, I want things to change. I want people to realize what’s happening and how their actions impact what this generation is facing. And I want to do this with empathy, not blame.

Linkin Park, a staple of teen angst, reinterpreted by Ahmed Zpidaww of Egypt


Credits

“Byproducts of Development” opens April 11th at Sultan Gallery - Kuwait
Abdullah Al-Mutairi (b.1990) is an artist and art therapist based in Kuwait.

Hamed Bukhamseen (b.1991) is a Kuwaiti architect who has worked internationally on various architectural and artistic projects. In 2016 he was co-curator of Kuwait's participation at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, with the project titled "Between East & West: A Gulf".

1.Emily Badger, Darla Cameron, By Emily Badger, and Darla Cameron, “How Railroads, Highways and Other Man-Made Lines Racially Divide America’s Cities,” Washington Post (washingtonpost), July 16, 2015. 2.“Kuwait Transformed Farah Al-Nakib in Conversation with Todd Reisz,” Ibraaz - Contemporary Visual Culture in North Africa and the Middle East, February 24, 2017, accessed February 24, 2017, http://www.ibraaz.org/interviews/205. ]]>
painting leah https://dismagazine.com/disco/mixes/84531/painting-leah/ Mon, 06 Mar 2017 14:11:17 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84531 jaaa

painting leah

weemix (and art) by jack scanlan
Listen here.

]]>
jaaa

painting leah

weemix (and art) by jack scanlan
Listen here.

]]>
NHU DUONG AW17 https://dismagazine.com/discussion/84777/nhu-duong-aw17/ Fri, 03 Mar 2017 18:14:11 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84777 [read more »]]]>
NHU DUONG AW17


Models at Nhu Duong’s Fall/Winter 2017 runway show—presented at Artists Space during New York Fashion Week—wore faces stained with shiny, gelatinous tears, though this detail was understated enough to not be immediately visible. Silently crying for no apparent reason seems in harmony with a sort of drunkenness in the collection’s silhouettes: a crisp white shirt, modeled by artist Timur Si-Qin, is buttoned off-center; hoodies hang over a single shoulder, leaving the other bare; and a pair of black dress pants, intact despite a ton of horizontal slits, forms two crooked lines from waist to ankle. It’s a good companion to the material opulence of the collection, which sees the Berlin designer working, somewhat uncharacteristically, with leather, lace, and fur.

A more familiar sight among Duong’s garments is their graphic elements, and the collection’s first look features a t-shirt that reads “GUILT” in a graphic logo, followed by hoodies marked with “TRAUMA” and “VENGEANCE.” Rather than stylize generic suffering, here Duong states it plainly.

Select pieces upset the collection’s otherwise muted, black-and- white palette: one model wears a textured, high-collared shirt in a washy blue, while similar pieces in a sheer acidic green are layered under cotton tees. Most notably, a very baby shade of pink makes an appearance in leather and in fur, as in a slightly overlarge pink leather jacket with slits across the chest and elbows, and matching pink pants, slit at the thighs, as though to imply chaps (a theme Duong has reworked through several of her collections). Duong’s manipulation of the creamy fabric comes off as both fetishistic and sculptural. Elsewhere, pink fur forms the loose and low-slung sleeves of a simple black dress.

The show’s press release compares these stylistic mutations to the transformation of superheroes between the streets and the sheets, and the clothes to stagecraft that reveals as it obscures. Within this theater, Duong’s clothes complicate formal orderings of elegance, desire, gender, and clubwear, instead patterning these elements into new and compelling transfigurations.

The show was supported by Nike featuring Nike VaporMax, launching in March.

Text by Tess Edmonson













shoes copy
























Production and Casting: Harbinger Creative

Casting Director: Marcelo Alcaide | Hammalcaide

Stylist: Kyle Luu

Soundtrack: Soda Plains

Set Design: Amy Henry

Hair: Shingo Shibata & Team

Makeup: Kanako Takase & Team

Photography: Dillon Sachs

]]>
Gogo Graham FW17 Lookbook https://dismagazine.com/distaste/84982/gogo-graham-fw17-lookbook-and-interview-with-cecilia-gentili/ https://dismagazine.com/distaste/84982/gogo-graham-fw17-lookbook-and-interview-with-cecilia-gentili/#respond Thu, 02 Mar 2017 10:07:17 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84982 [read more »]]]>

New2


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Model Cecilia Gentili
Photography Serena Jara
Hair Sonny Molina
Clothes and Styling Gogo Graham

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Intro by Devan Diaz

Four women sat atop a Brooklyn roof in February; a designer, a photographer, a writer, and a model. Arriving from Texas, Gogo came to the city to be the dressmaker for a population of invisible women. Serena, from Minnesota , was there to capture the day with the sort of tenderness that the job required. I was there to extract the truth, as all writers hope to do. This pursuit caused me to leave Nashville behind six years ago. On this unusually warm day, we all assembled ourselves around the model. Even the sun positioned itself in observance of her, creating the light needed for the shoot. We orbited around Cecilia Gentili, the reason for our gathering. To call her a model would be to simplify her role. With the austerity of a Grand Dame, Cecilia is the matriarch for many transgender girls that come to New York seeking asylum. Gogo, Serena and I were just a few of those girls.

Gogo’s inspiration for the collection was born out of respect. When thumbing through the collection, she turned to me and said “She’s mommy. She deserves it.”

What took place was an intergenerational conversation that has no precedent. Our collective history is largely un-documented, but not for long. While the three of us were coming into the world, Cecilia was creating the path. When we embarked on womanhood, women like Cecilia offered a hand. This collection was a love letter to the past with an eye to the future.

New2

New2

An interview with Cecelia Gentile

Gogo: You know that like… you are the reason why me and so many other people are here

Cecelia: Thats very nice, thats a beautiful thing to say and I’m flattered, you’re gonna make me cry but I won’t… but you know, its not because of me its because of you… you had the audacity to be yourself and do what you want, I was just there, and I was able to help you in the process.

And that deserves credit, don’t get me wrong, I take my credit, I want my credit right, but its like… you get the real credit, you with your courage and your strong will to do what you needed to do to be happy. so, i was there, so i was able to help you, and thats a beautiful thing. Not just for you, its a beautiful thing for me you know, its a beautiful thing for me.

And… realistically… it was also my job, I got paid for it! How cool is that? How cool is that, to get a job being able to help somebody do whatever the fuck they want with their lives, with their bodies, its amazing.

G: You definitely facillitated that, in the most real, concrete way… I dont know if you remember when I first called…

C:I do…

G:I remember I called you, I was like… this is “deadname,” I want to know about the trans health program…

C: Let me tell you some secrets… English is my second language, so I have a real hard time understanding people sometimes, I have to make an effort to understand… So when you talk in such a quiet, intimate way… I’m like what the fuck did she say..

G: You were like yeah, just come to the orientation!

C: Just come to the orientation, maybe I can read your lips, girl lol

G: Lmao maybe there was a reason I was so quiet then though…

New2

C: I hope I’m not offending you with this but, I just heard like… this really sad child.

G: Oh my god, yeah.

C: This really sad child, you know… and being able to help somebody…I don’t know if you did get out of that sadness, I hope you did, and it shows like you did… you’re like a new person, you’re bubbly… and happy overall, I see you happy. With some shit that may go down in your life just like anyone else, but its not that feeling of sadness.

And when I met you, not just you of course, with many people it happens, but with you specifically I can say… I saw a lot of myself, I was a young girl, in the big city, going to school and wanting to transition… No I wasn’t! There was no doctor, there was no Cecilia, there was nothing. So being able to assist you in your process is so rewarding, because then you do see that some things are changing, and it’s amazing… I can say that I love all the people I was able to help, in this transition process.

G: That’s a lot of people.

C: Yea, when I left it was like 600 people. 600 people… And I guess for some reasons you make special connections with some of them, and you were one of them. Actually, your group of friends are all in that group, you know like Serena… Now, we’re doing pictures, and I’m wearing your clothes, and Serena is taking the pictures.

And its like… we became family, and I know you do have a wonderful family, at least I know you have a wonderful mom, I don’t know the rest of your family… I don’t have any family here–I just have a partner–so you became my family… and I hope somehow, I became your family too…

G: You did!

C: And that’s what this process is about, because… if we’re not family to each other, what are we?

G: Chosen family…

C: Yea. Its so nice being a mother when your children are already grown, I don’t have to worry about you… I don’t have to worry about like, the milk being too hot, I don’t have to worry about your first time… its done and dealt with! But you know, it’s so good to have this experience.

G: I think, all of us, my friends who you just talked about, we all feel this way.

New2

New2

C: It’s just so wonderful, I lived so isolated for so many years, sometimes my partner will be like, ‘oh golly, you have so many friends!’… And I’m like, they’re not enough, I have to make up for all those years I lived isolated, and didn’t communicate with anybody.

G: I feel the opposite. I mean, we obviously didn’t have the same experiences and stuff, but I’m so cautious meeting people. I feel like there are alot of good people I haven’t met yet, but I’m so worried I’m going to find myself with bad people… It’s paranoia, I probably shouldn’t have even said that, but its the truth…

C: We have that, being trans, living everyday… comes with this anxiety. Is this person I’m going to walk across on the sidewalk going to be indifferent– which is awesome, if you’re indifferent to me, I’m happy— or are they gonna be a fucking psycho, or are they gonna be somebody who will let me know that they know I’m trans and they’re ‘ok with it’, which is kind of fucked up.

I think that’s part of trans people, especially trans women, that we have all this anxiety of how people are going to perceive us, and it makes sense that you are closed to finding that out, because if you don’t make an effort to find out, that’s better…

G: And even people who you know, or feel like you know, sometimes they suprise you… even today, I walked into this market, and this guys who’s always super extra friendly.. always commenting on whatever… in an extra way, and then one day he’s having a bad day and he decides to be like ‘Hey whats up man’. And its like, oh, now.. today I’m ‘man’…

C: Or if you didn’t pay him no mind, its just so usual, guys coming to you trying to pick you up, trying to be funny… and when you’re like ‘no, thanks’, they’re ‘oh you fucking man’… and I’m like– wait, let’s back up 2 minutes–

G: If you’re looking for a man lol…

C: Yea, whats up with that? But you know, it makes sense why so many of us are so resistant to establishing that kind of engagement with people.

I am kind of over everything, I’m 45, I’m like fuck everything, I don’t care, but for so many years its like, its better if I dont communicate with anyone, its easier, but then I was super isolated for so many years…

But then I changed and I allowed myself to kind of like open up to different people. Not everybody was great, I had bad experiences but during that process I got a lot of good people in my life, and that was pretty awesome.

New2

G: Well, Serena shot this thing, and another thing I wanted to ask you about was the work you’re doing with Serena, and also your own work.

C: Well.. I have this super boring job– it’s not boring, it’s nice, and I’m really happy with the work I do, but for many people, looking from the outside, it’s like sitting in all office all day… But I really enjoy the work that I do, and not just that but having this title… like she’s the director of policy at this major organisation– deputy director of policy at GMAC.. who would have thought that this trans woman without a Masters would have such a powerful position in such a widely known organisation. So I enjoy that that is me!

I also do a lot of storytelling events where I just tell the story of my life. I have a lot of sad and horrible stories but I choose to tell people stories that are funny or fun, nice and easy to hear. I don’t think I’m ready to tell my painful stories yet, and someday maybe I will, but for now I just choose to focus on the fun part of being trans, and finding this way of liberation… So I do that, and I enjoy it a lot, and it makes me happy.

So with Serena, for her thesis at school, she’s been working with my stories, and doing photographic work around my stories, and we were able to do a couple of shoots that were really successful, the material she comes up with is so freaking amazing.

G: Both of you are!

C: I was working with her in this project, doing pictures for her, wearing your clothes… This opportunity came about and I was super happy to do it. Mind you.. I’m fucking 45 years old, I don’t know if I want to spend Saturday afternoon on a roof, with the wind and the cold on freaking high heels. But I wouldn’t change it for the world, I’d do it all and much more…

G: It was weird… the whole setting was just like perfect, don’t you think, for the middle of winter..

C: Yeah, it was the middle of winter, we had this really warm day-

G: The sun was out…

C: And I got there and Sonny did my hair so beautifully, and my makeup was so nice, we started doing the pictures and all the clothes just fit me so perfectly, the sun was nice and everything went so perfect… and I felt so comfortable, so comfortable.

New2

G: Even in those fucking uncomfortable ass boots.

C: No, the boots were great, the only thing I didn’t enjoy was the sandals, the red sandals, I just need to feel my foot supported, I hate those. That’s the life of a model, you have to wear all this shit they want you to wear!

But as I said before… I’m 45, I weigh a couple of pounds more than I would like to weigh, my body doesn’t look like it did when I was in my 20s, it doesn’t look that much like how I want it to look like… but I came to love it as it is. I put it down to age in part, but I don’t think its just aging, I know some people get to… I think it was a process of empowering myself and being empowered by my community to accept my body as it is.

So although I may not look the way I want to look, or aspire to look… Modelling clothes for a photoshoot is like, hey my body is beautiful and I can do this. For so many years I felt so uncomfortable with my body, that at this age being able to be ok with it and happy with it as it is, is so empowering and so beautiful… and having somebody make clothes that look great over this body is so gratifying and so important for me.

G: I mean– you looked so fucking incredible that day, you look so incredible as you sit before me now… it shows in the photos I think.

C: The photos are fucking amazing, I can’t wait to see them out.

G: You look so powerful, I mean you are– you’re a very powerful woman.

C: Thank you, thank you, I like to think that I am, I could be humble and I wish I could say, ‘oh nooo’, but no, I am fucking powerful, and I like to come across as being powerful. It has nothing to do with being trans– no, it has to do with being trans, it has to do with being a woman, it has to do with being a person of colour, it has to do with being a Latina with a fucking accent– I have to come across as being powerful, otherwise people walk all over you.

The intersection that people like you and me have, being trans woman of color– I always like to say non-black trans woman of colour– you have it very hard from many sides, being trans woman, being a woman, being a person of colour. For me, it’s important to come across as powerful, and I do make an effort, even when I don’t feel powerful, I do make an effort to come across as powerful. Again, I’m going to put it down to age, I’m fucking 45 and you’re not gonna walk over me, no– not this time, I let this happen for so many years, that today nobody is gonna walk over me. Or if you are, it’s because I want you to walk over me, sometimes I like that kind of shit lol

G: lol yeah

New2

C: But you know, it is important to be in a place where I can control the way people perceive me. Things like gender are a lot about perception, being able to manipulate the way people perceive me has been fundamental to the way I am. Which is like– I’m whoever, it’s not like I’m anywhere, I am in a space where I am comfortable and happy but…

When we talk about success and talent, I feel… I don’t want my story to put any kind of pressure on, you know, the new generations, the girls are like 17, 18, I don’t want anybody to have any pressure to be successful in any concept that is not your concept of success. You can not let me or anybody else make the determination of what success should be for you. And you know, we talk about success like– Oh, Gogo is a successful designer, Cecelia is a successful trans woman of colour– What the fuck is success. That’s not success, that’s my idea of success. Maybe being a designer is her idea of success, it doesn’t mean everybody has to be successful… Maybe being successful for you is doing your nails, painting them green–

G: Getting out bed–

C: Yeah. We have to be very careful when we talk about trans people, specifically trans women, when we talk about success. Let’s not define success for others. Let people define success for themselves. I feel like… I’m always overdoing so much because for so many years I let this idea of success that wasn’t mine become mine. Nowadays I have to stop everything and say, hey, am I doing this because I want to or am I doing this because I want people to see me as this successful person.

So, I wanted to say that because we keep talking about success and talent, and you know, those are very individual concepts that we should not translate to others. You know? Ideas of success and talent are very different for everybody. I come across this concept of “every trans woman can get to be successful” like yeah, they can be successful as what they think success is. Not as anybody’s idea of what success is. Did I repeat this so much?

G: No, I think I kind of, for me, I feel like if some little baby trans person sees some stupid shit that I’m doing and then they think, wow i’m not gonna kill myself today! Then that’s totally enough for me, that is success. And like you said I think it’s important for us to recognize that success means something different for everybody.

New2

New2

C: Yeah there’s enough pressure that we have to be careful not to put more pressure with this idea that we have to be successful. This pressure to look a certain way, to act a certain way, to do these hormone treatments, you know… I’m old school, it was very square, the idea of being a trans woman, you do this this and this, you’re gonna be this kind of woman and you’re gonna look this kind of way and it took me so many years to be like… hmmm maybe this is not what I wanted to be, maybe I didn’t want to look like Sofia Vergara, I mean she’s beautiful. Maybe because I’m Latina, everybody thinks I should be this kind of woman… which usually is Sofia Vergara in everybody’s minds, and I think she’s beautiful, but I dont have to be like her or look like her.

When I’m like, ‘I want to change my tits’, people are like ‘oh you’re going bigger?’ And I’m like, no I want to go smaller, I don’t want tits actually… and people are like why?! I just dont! All the big tits, big ass, long hair with highlights is not what I wanted to be totally, it’s mostly what everybody around me thought I should be. You know if you have big tits and a big ass we like you better, we’re gonna accept you because you conform to this… And I did that for so long… that I’m at a point where I can allow myself to let go of all that. Does that make sense?

G: Yeah I sometimes think about that too, where I’m just like… do I even need to be on hormones? Do I need to grow my hair? And you know it’s difficult as trans women when you walk into a place and you know in your mind, oh, if I’m not wearing high heels, a pencil skirt and lipstick, people are going to misgender me. If I am, then they’ll always expect you to look like that, and if you don’t, then they’re like, ‘oh, are you going back’?

C: Yeah… there’s no way to win. But again when you get to my age, I don’t know why I keep putting it on age. I think when you get to my age you may be able to get to a point where you’re like fuck that, fuck everything. Whatever. But I dont think I would be here if it wasnt for you guys, and this is the part where I thank you all helping me seeing you girls.. These fucking girls they just don’t give a fuck about anything. You know me, not shaving my armpits…

G: (lol) This actually freaks me out, but as a political statement, I have to have it.

C: How many girls are like, I dont care! And seeing all these young trans girls that have been able to live their femininity in a way that they want to and not in a way that was imposed has been fundamental in me being able to be like, i’m gonna shave my head and whatever. And letting go of that stereotype and this gaze… That’s so important to me. And your clothes say a lot about that. I felt super feminine when I was wearing them without feeling the stereotype of femininity that was imposed on me and that’s so cool. Maybe it’s just because I love you. (lol)

G: I’m glad you felt that way.

x

New2

]]>
https://dismagazine.com/distaste/84982/gogo-graham-fw17-lookbook-and-interview-with-cecilia-gentili/feed/ 0
TELFAR AW17 https://dismagazine.com/discussion/84546/telfar-aw17/ Wed, 15 Feb 2017 01:52:51 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84546 [read more »]]]>
TELFAR AW17


…And the award for most time-travel-friendly, culturally adaptable, contextually annoyed, unisex specific, panic-onomical, worn equally by both offense and defense — goes to: TELFAR. Fill in the fucking blank. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder; and it’s a responsibility. Fill in the fucking blank.

— Ryan Trecartin, TELFAR F/W 2017

TELFAR F/W 2017 continues the designer’s starkly original, trend-agnostic, anti-identitarian, deconstruction of garments and their meanings. This season the body’s meridians are fault lines in which not only colors and fabric — but entire genres of garment can give-way to another: creating hybrid forms like puffer-peacoats; track-jacket-dress-shirts, wool-slack-pum-pum-shorts and cargo-knickers.

A jewel-tone palette in nylon, knit, wool, cotton, fleece and denim appear at times all in a single garment, creating a total-look that is impossible to place. Somewhere between Patagonia and Shenzhen TELFAR continues to visualize an empty horizon in a fashion industry where more and more people, crowd an ever narrowing aesthetic consensus.

2017 is a good year not to fit in.

Photography June Canedo

Styling Avena Gallagher


Makeup Mario Badescu

Hair Shingo Shibata

d53

d1

d39

d3

d49

d4

d52

d5

d44

d6

d58

d48

d9

d11

d12

d13

d54

d45

d17

d18

d19

d20

d21

d10

d2

d22

d23

d24

d25

d26

d27

d30

d31

d8

d7

d32

d33

d34

d15

d35

d36

d37

d38

d40

d14

d42

d28

d46

d47

d50

d51

d56

d57

]]>
THOT FANTASY III by Mhysa https://dismagazine.com/disco/mixes/84739/thot-fantasy-iii-by-mhysa/ Tue, 14 Feb 2017 22:26:31 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84739 thot-fantas

THOT FANTASY III by Mhysa

part III of Mhysa's THOT FANTASY | artwork by sarah nicole francois
Listen here.

]]>
thot-fantas

THOT FANTASY III by Mhysa

part III of Mhysa's THOT FANTASY | artwork by sarah nicole francois
Listen here.

]]>
:3lON – Many Moons (Remix) (prod. Marcelline & M|GHTHAUNT) https://dismagazine.com/disco/mixes/84674/many-moons-marcelline-mighthaunt-remix/ Mon, 13 Feb 2017 22:34:33 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84674 marceline

:3lON – Many Moons (Remix) (prod. Marcelline & M|GHTHAUNT)

Art by Marcelline
Listen here.

]]>
marceline

:3lON – Many Moons (Remix) (prod. Marcelline & M|GHTHAUNT)

Art by Marcelline
Listen here.

]]>
Nicolas Ceccaldi, Pier 1 Imports And The Queering of Nothingness https://dismagazine.com/dystopia/83430/nicolas-ceccaldi-pier-1-imports-and-the-queering-of-nothingness/ Thu, 05 Jan 2017 17:49:25 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=83430 [read more »]]]>

Nicolas Ceccaldi, Pier 1 Imports And The Queering of Nothingness

Gerardo Contreras

The technical environment is our over-production of pollutant, fragile and obsolescent objects. For production lives, its entire logic and strategy are articulated on fragility and obsolescence.

– Jean Baudrillard

There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine.

– Gertrude Stein

Hey I just met you and this is crazy but please don’t talk to me because you are a stranger.

– Mira Gonzalez

Nicolas Ceccaldi’s Les Chemins de la Honte gives form to a fundamental absence of certainty. Machinic iterations exist among cosmic singularities, reassessing the spatial displacements and inseparability of dissimilar ontological vehicles. For Ceccaldi, postsexual affectivity innervates alterations of ontobiological derivation as they are ingrained in unambiguous libidinal interworking, informational exchanges, and phylogenetic actualizations. These challenge all efforts at severing matter from the unconscious, offering a concrete psychodynamic and epistemological framework for the instatement of a gothic technoscience. By juxtaposing multiple defragmented, inorganic, and inter-operating metabolisms to incorporate quantifiable, organic, and informational units that are encrypted in progressions of the energetic and meta-linguistic emergence of a biomolecular dramatics, Ceccaldi suggests a theory of quantum filth outside its anticipated discursive restrictions. Thusly, in Ceccaldi, quantum filth is not restricted to semantic or expansive acts of biological occurrences or to anthropocentric hallucinations of the embodied undead. Instead, the self is opened up to a pragmatic process of rematerialization that penetrates the silent, invisible, nonhuman underworlds of nature.

Through a careful taxonomy of the flamboyant forms taken from the arcane pataphysics of modern human ecosystems, Nicolas Ceccaldi insists on re-inserting monstrosity into nature rather than imposing a genetic egotism on materiality. Ceccaldi points out that reality cannot be experienced as “substance-outside-itself” or as “substance-behind-emergence but as substance-in-emergency. This implies that, in Ceccaldi’s work, material interactions generate, implement, and instantiate a decoherent obliteration of pre-textual animality; a materiality in incessant convulsion is the resultant of interactions among its constitutive dispositifs. The discursive, therefore, is always already the psychic inter-production of inorganic emergence, which Ceccaldi circumscribes as repetitive biosemiotic phenomena and libidinal expenditures—that is, actual somatic engagements that furnish meaning with unambiguous impressions of the self. These impressions—reverberating, but not harmonizing, with queer discursive expansions—are quantifiable decoherences. They manufacture substantial individualities—that is, energetic complementarities that are restrictedly resolute in their fastidious occurrence—within unambiguous instrumental interactions. Ceccaldi, in view of biomolecular dramatics, rephrases the physical-expansive exercise in queer performativity as entailing particular iterative enactments —queer processes of signification—through which matter is differentially articulated.

The notion of queer performativity questioned by Ceccaldi is derived from the relationship between emergence, disappearance, and a view of the self as corporeal absence. Ceccaldi’s construction of queer agency undoubtedly suggests an appointment with nothingness: a queer politics in terms of nothingness rather than as becoming. By diffusing significance in an absolute corporeality and ethereal textuality, Ceccaldi points to how schizoid interactions are restraining undertakings that do not regulate future time, but instead anticipate subatomic indeterminacy by way of the interactivities of biogenic occurrences. These occurrences entail non-human, post-human and fantasmatic forms of existence. Ceccaldi concludes that a posthumanist, verificationist account of discursive performativity contests the supposition that nature is impassive; that it is the byproduct of bio-molecular semiotic interferences, resisting total obliteration in an uncannily peripheral existential milieu. Rather, he suggests that, as is elaborated in bimolecular dramatics, the queerness of performativity is delimited not to human interactions in the world, but to the operations of the inorganic world, where postsexual relations are instrumental in the world’s dynamics of differentiation.

Text Gerardo Contreras is an architect, writer and art curator based in Mexico City. He currently directs the editorial initiative Preteen Press. His fatigue diaries, ‘The Muppets Never Age!’ will be out this winter.

Images courtesy House of Gaga

]]>
Form versus Content in Enforced Transparency https://dismagazine.com/discussion/84024/form-versus-content-in-enforced-transparency/ Sat, 10 Dec 2016 11:23:19 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84024 [read more »]]]>
Form versus Content in Enforced Transparency
Matt Goerzen and Raymond Johansen
Black and white images courtesy Julian Garcia.

Black and white images courtesy Julian Garcia.

Transparency is seen as vital to any functioning democracy; in the United States, citizens enjoy limited powers to bring government documents into the public domain via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and some legal protection is granted to public interest-motivated leakers and whistleblowers. Generally, transparency is understood as a net positive for liberal democracy, and organizations like the Pirate Parties International centralize transparency in their re-imaginings of more radical democratic politics. Activist organizations like WikiLeaks and Anonymous also dedicate themselves to bringing information about the political elite into the public domain—often this aligns with leftist agendas, but recent events raise questions about just who ultimately benefits from the publicization of secretive information.

Democratic theorists like Darin Barney and Jodi Dean warn us that the availability of information alone does not guarantee politically salutary outcomes.1 The commitment to analyzing and deliberating on an endlessly accelerating flow of information can actually push the event of real political organizing towards an always–elusive horizon. It is a mistake, warns Barney, to reduce politics to publicity alone.2 Deliberation can be debilitating.

And the idea of “post-truth” politics further suggests that the form of information’s coming to light can shape its reception in an even more substantial manner than the content of that information itself. The status of the emails hacked from the DNC and the Clinton campaign—their bulk and the illicit event of their publication via salacious leaks, hacks, and criminal investigations—may have overshadowed the relative innocuity of much of their content, and the significance of a foreign government’s involvement in bringing them to light. When does an all-encompassing commitment to transparency as an end in-and-of-itself —as upheld by organizations like WikiLeaks—facilitate the advancement of still other powerful agendas and geopolitical machinations, themselves hidden from view?

Raymond Johansen sits on the board of Pirate Parties International and is an outspoken advocate of hacker exfiltration, or “enforced transparency.” Founded in 2005 by Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate Parties received a major boost on October 29 of this year, when an unprecedented number of the parties’ representatives were elected to office in Iceland’s national elections—an accomplishment spurned, in no small way, by information contained in the Panama Papers leaks, which prompted the nation’s elected leader to resign his office.

Matt Goerzen is an artist and researcher interested in the political effects of anonymity, critical forms of trolling, security cultures, and memetic warfare.

In the two weeks straddling the election, Goerzen asked Johansen a series of questions about the mechanisms of transparency at work in this emerging political arena.

Matt Goerzen: Could you explain the concept of enforced transparency and where it originated?

Ray Johansen: The concept of transparency and openness is simple. If governments practice it then we, as a people, will be able to spot misuses of power and corruption, and will be better equipped to safeguard our democracy. But when transparency becomes just a word, it functions as a smokescreen that governments around the world use to keep us in the dark. Something must be done to prevent this. Traditionally, investigative journalism, using FOIA requests and whistleblowers, has been used to enforce transparency. Now, to shed light on the activities of governments or corporations, activists around the globe have turned to hacking in order to obtain information. The data is then shared with the public. The Pirate Parties calls this enforcing transparency; enforcing “the laws” of openness, if you will. The idea of framing these activities as ‘enforced transparency’ came from a group of hacktivists within the Anonymous collective. Perhaps Jeremy Hammond’s acts are the best example of this. Hammond executed enforced transparency by researching and releasing data from the global intelligence company Stratfor after the intelligence contractor had been hacked.

MG: Is there any one person who inspired you to focus your attention on enforced transparency?

RJ: Indeed. The actions of journalist Barrett Brown, released in November this year after four years of captivity, best exemplify enforced transparency. He created #ProjectPM and, by crowd sourcing journalism, exposed the evils of private intelligence contractors—namely Stratfor and HB Gary. His penalty was 63 months in federal custody. Mr. Brown—currently writing for The Intercept—is our hero, and will forever be a legend to transparency advocates.

Barrett Brown

Barrett Brown

MG: Are the Pirate Parties based around the idea that if they were to be elected to government, all activity would be transparent?

RJ: Not all information, but information that promotes democracy; relevant information that benefits society and keep governments under citizen’s control. In Pirate Parties, all activity is public and livestreamed.

MG: What are the core principles or features of the Pirate Parties, in your view?

RJ: That’s a difficult question to answer, considering that I’m not a politician. Here is how Birgitta Jonsdottir [the head of the Icelandic Party] puts it: ‘The Pirate Parties started in Sweden in 2006, and it only had one agenda: to change draconian copyright laws.’ However, the parties’ goals have changed and shifted, primarily because the questions of human rights and cyberethics have become much more relevant. So, if you want to place it somewhere on the spectrum, I would say it’s a party that has its roots in civilian rights. But we are not like many left parties that want to regulate citizens and create nanny states. We believe that regulation should be on the powerful, not on the individual.

MG: You endorse activities that many might see as questionable. Are the Pirate Parties comfortable supporting these tactics?

RJ: I do support hacktivism, which sometimes does not follow the law. Our politicians will, of course, be more careful than us activists. They’ll avoid telling people to do illegal shit. But whistleblowing and leaking are very well accepted by Pirates. Both of those things are not too different from investigative journalism. Journalists use open sources, but they often consist of stolen material. Hacktivists will carry out the unearthing of documents—the breaking in, if you will.

MG: So, you maintain a strict OpSec boundary between your hacker identity and your public advocacy identity?

RJ: Yes, the OpSec must be watertight, as must be the walls between my different identities—A.K.A. alts, or socks. Complete anonymity.

MG: What do you consider to be the proper relationship between privacy and transparency?

RJ: Privacy is for the people and transparency is for governments and the powerful.

MG: How do these concepts of privacy and transparency relate to a more societally-general concept like “security”?

RJ: Security is the key to all of this. At this point in history, privacy will only work if everybody starts using encryption. This includes governments and corporations, which must better safeguard the information that they hold on each of us. Enforcing transparency will be be harder when data is properly secured. That is why the Pirate Parties want better transparency laws and fewer loopholes than exist today.

MG: It’s looking likely that the Pirate Parties could take charge of Iceland in the country’s next election. What sort of significance could this have in global politics? Do you think we can expect Iceland to become an official haven for both legally persecuted hackers and legally gray dumps of data?

RJ: The significance of the Icelandic elections remains to be seen,. I can tell you, however, that quite a number of my peers are contemplating moving there simply because they see the potential of what the parties are trying to achieve. That also includes a number of software companies. They’ve come to think of it as a possible digital free-haven in the future. For those who are especially interested, I recommend you look up The International Modern Media Institute. It was founded in 2011 with the aim of bringing together the best functioning laws in relation to freedom of information, expression, and speech. It reflects on the reality of a borderless world and the challenges that this concept imposes in the 21st century, both locally and globally.

MG: Until then, forcing transparency rests on the responsibility of individuals with skill and determination, or with the ability to convince someone with skills that this is the right course?

RJ: That is very right indeed. And if someone in our collective steps out—does something wrong—there is a form of self correction.

MG: How does that work exactly?

RJ: Let’s say a Hacktivist hacks information and releases it. Let’s say that putting pressure on a governor in Florida means that the personal information of the governor’s 14 year old daughter gets out there. The person responsible will get into trouble and be put in his or her place. Most of the time, such information would not even be released because the crew will not let it be published. Collateral damage to innocents and children is frowned upon.

MG: Right, so you have an internal, editorial vetting process?

RJ: Very often, actions will have at least a handful of people at their core—and yes, there will be a hierarchy that vets actions and data. The older, “old phags,”3 often stop the young ones.

MG: Can you walk me through the deliberation process when someone in your community gets a data dump? How do you vet it for authenticity and to make sure no one “innocent” is affected?

RJ: The short version is the following: When data is made available to us, the exfiltrator(s)—if it is the result of a hack, we will usually employ different techniques to prove where the data was obtained from. Often, that is done by simple screen shots showing identifying details about the data and the environment from which they came. This is then shared among the crew in order for it to be stamped as legitimate. Since hackers typically don’t have particular knowledge about the content, a sample set of data is often times shared around the globe with those that may have knowledge in the particular area. Sometimes the sample set will be published online so that we automatically get feedback from independent sources like journalists, researchers or peers.

The next step is, of course, to try to clean the data. That means removing things like credit card and other personal information. At that point, (the process can take weeks), the data is shared with the public through a leak platform such as WikiLeaks or through newspapers. This act is what is referred to as leaking.

MG: Has there been any attempt to propose an ethical code of conduct for exfiltration? Do you think defining exfiltration through an accessible terminology, like you’ve done in conceptualizing “enforced transparency,” is a gesture in this direction?

RJ: There have been many attempts to do that, but in a loosely knit collectives like ours, that is almost impossible. You could say that we lead by example, learn from our mistakes, and, more often than not, witness self correction. By the latter I mean that feedback from our peers tends to root out ethical mistakes. We could all benefit from an ethical code, but in an organization without hierarchy, there are few ways to spread or enforce such rules in a formal way. We are, however, inspired by concepts and manifestos.

MG: What is your general opinion of the way enforced transparency has been used in the 2016 presidential election?

RJ: In general, it has made this election cycle the most exciting I have ever seen. People are slowly realizing what really goes on in the halls of power. They are seeing that democracy has fallen. They are seeing that their right to participate has been hijacked. This will, in the future, be seen as a historical victory for transparency and democracy. The fact that a few elites have had their privacy taken away does not even register with me. Frankly, hearing people who have advocated for the NSA whine about their privacy makes me laugh—they have stolen the privacy of the whole world, and now they suddenly find the concept important. The irony is staggering.

MG: Exfiltration and leaking are often defended as a new “fifth estate”—a sort of journalistic function that replaces the depreciated watchdog function of mainstream journalism [the “fourth estate”] by employing sometimes illegal means of acquiring information while also ensuring that establishment media outlets do not ignore stories. (WikiLeaks, for instance, has shown that the New York Times has buried stories at the request of elites, until their appearance in alternative media forced their hand lest the omission become glaring). Is this how you see your work? And do you see what you do as having the same journalistic vocational responsibility of ensuring balance?

RJ: I see it as almost exactly the same. We will always have a responsibility to act balanced, but our loyalty will never be to one particular party or block. While enforcing transparency, we act on the data we get. If there is little to no data from, for instance, Donald Trump, it may simply mean there is nothing to find, or that the collective may be concluding he is doing the job of ruining himself on his own. To be perfectly open, dozens of hackers have been going at the Trump campaign for over a year. There are even bounties on his tax returns. Every week I hear of someone going at his networks. It is neither our nor Trump’s fault that Clinton has so many skeletons after 24 years in politics.

MG: Some people are critical of these hacks because we don’t know where they come from. The US has a vested interest in pinning these hacks on Russia,4 while WikiLeaks maintains that they are of value wherever they were sourced from. Do you think that the source of exfiltrated or leaked information changes its meaning?

RJ: To me, it does not matter whether FSB, the GRU,5 or Mother Theresa did it—it only matters that the information is legit and unmanipulated. The data is cold. Whining about whether Putin hacked you is silly when the US has been doing nothing but hacking democracies around the world for 60 years. The NSA hacks everybody continually and uses the information. What is new in the US election cycle is that this information becomes public—it’s used in a different way.

MG: When you see, for instance, that a disproportionate number of leaks target one candidate and not the other, is there an expression of concern in the community? Is there a mounting realization that more needs to be done to exfiltrate data from the other side?

RJ: Target selection discussions happen every hour of every day—but not often along those lines. In my network, I see attacks on both camps happen in equal measure. On a personal note, I can tell you that there will always be more data to leak on a serial war hungry wrongdoer than on the town clown.6

MG: Do you think that corporations and governments ever intentionally obfuscate information and make it available to a leaker in a contemporary equivalent of the “Haversack ruse”? [A famous military tactic referenced in the GCHQ’s Snowden leaked “Art of Deception” slide deck. It refers to a World War 1 instance where a British officer intentionally “lost” a set of falsified battle plans while pursued by the enemy, knowing that it would cause the enemy to waste resources fortifying a position the British had no intention of attacking].

RJ: We have seen mainstream media become mere tools for such deception. It is quite possible that it has happened in the young world of leaks too. The art of deception has seen a renaissance in recent digitized years. In my neck of the woods, we sometimes call it selective leaking, and we are well aware that we must always fight to prevent ourselves from becoming useful idiots.. Both the West and Russia have infiltrated and influenced our ranks. They constantly try to nudge us to do their bidding. Russia will for instance support and amplify social unrest, as they did with live streams of the November 5th protests of Anonymous. The FBI on the hand infiltrated and directed parts of Anonymous while hacking Turkey with the local RedHack. This is where OpSec (operational security) comes in. Much of our time is spent safeguarding the integrity of our activities. We have people that only focus on counterintelligence among us. Additionally, I can tell you that our spearheads have started working in very small teams and even alone. They do not tweet or brag—and they are highly resistant to infiltration.

MG: There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the legality of journalists using or posting hacked and exfiltrated data. And misunderstandings—or outright lies—are commonplace: a Fox News talking head, for instance, recently warned his audience that, while journalists could access the Podesta emails, taking such an action would be illegal for a common citizen [a false claim]. Activist/journalist Barrett Brown is currently in jail in the US, partially because he shared a link to hacked data before it was published, and may have been part of the planning that led to the hack. I know you support this form of access and scrutiny, but do you think there ought to be any constraints on the way it is accessed and shared once it enters the public domain?

RJ: The discussions you are referring to are nothing but ploys to control the narrative—this has been done for ages. One good example is the activists that broke into an FBI building to recover information about the COINTELPRO program. The story was about the FBI doing something illegal, and it was in the public’s interest to know about it. Public interest is the only real parameter for using information or not.

MG: On the other side of the election now, do you think the effects of WikiLeaks’ publication of emails exfiltrated from the DNC emails and Clinton’s staff favoured Trump’s victory?

RJ: When we look at the outcome it’s hard not to think that it had an effect. That said, US media did not cover the stories that came out very broadly. Historians will do a better job of that and I think the Podesta emails will, over time, have a profound effect far beyond who won this election.

MG: Do you think the sorts of editorializing WikiLeaks attached to these publications (suggesting on twitter that John Podesta’s social interactions with Marina Abramović implied that the Clinton campaign participated in satanic rituals, for instance) went beyond the aims of “transparency”?

RJ: Some of the editorializing went too far. Like with WikiLeaks’ Twitter opinion polls about Hillary Clinton’s health. That had nothing to do with leaks and much more to do with having an opinion, with slander. Yesterday Birgitta Jónsdóttir said: ‘To post personal conversations between people who are indeed personal, even with people’s children, is also going too far.’ I can do little but agree on that.

MG: Is there ever an instance when opacity is preferable to transparency, not only in a personal (privacy) context but also at the level of a state or powerful corporation?

RJ: There are dozens of ways where that is the right way to go. There is a lot of information that should not be in the public domain. That will have to be governed by laws on privacy and security. Where security is a concern there must be oversight. Today, oversight has been reduced to rubber stamp courts and fake claims of national security issues. Good transparency is opacity, when privacy and security have been taken into account.

MG: In the last couple of years, info has come out about Russia’s use of sock puppets and the like to poison the well in Western political discourse, sew distraction, etc. The goal doesn’t seem to be to influence politics so much as to throw it into disarray. Russia’s influence in this election could be seen as the ultimate bid towards this sort of chaos. Does the hacktivist tactic of enforced transparency ever aim at destabilizing democracy rather than informing it? And what do hacktivists hope will replace that system if it’s weakened?

RJ: Russia has been doing that effectively for quite a while. One could say they are protecting their own interests. The West is just as bad, and in a lot more places—even using military might. Disarray and chaos are all elements needed to spark change. Nobody wants Chaos for chaos’ sake—it is what the chaos does, and its potential end game, that is desirable. Most Anons will say that Transparency must be the end game, along with a society of more equality and less corporatism. The Pirate Parties are a vehicle for such change, but hacktivists are not actively working to put governments out and put Pirates in.

MG: So, for your community, transparency is an end in and of itself rather than a means?

RJ: Yes, it is, because transparency will make societies do better. Shining a light on the bad thing in the corner will kill the evil that resides there. Corruption is a good example and tax evasion is another. Overthrowing a government is never the goal, but shining a light on human rights issues like torture will let the people choose a new one.

MG: But when does a transparency activist become a stooge or a “useful idiot”—someone facilitating the interests of an opportunistic and calculating powerful actor? And how does one guard against this?

RJ: When or if you get used to only share or spread information that furthers one side’s narrative you have become a tool or a useful idiot. That is a challenge we face all the time, but it is not a good enough reason to not leak. Guarding against it is more about being vigilant and not letting it happen. We spend a lot of our time identifying and rooting out snakes in the grass. The only real way to guard against this is more transparency, not less.

MG: What has the general feeling in the forced transparency community been during the last couple weeks of the campaign, and following news of Trump’s victory?

RJ: The last couple of weeks were very interesting. Many followed media about the leaks very closely. Thinking all the time that Clinton would surely win. After the results most people I know were in a state of shock.

MG: What’s next? Is there anything planned?

RJ: There hasn’t been much time for serious planning. But I see activists and hacktivists are already gearing up, now that the name of the new enemy is known. Many have started to point out his election promises and will follow up on them. Others, like in the LGBT community, are focusing on narrower causes, where they fear Trump will have an intolerable effect.

Ray Johansen

Ray Johansen


Credits

Black and white images courtesy Julian Garcia.


1. See, for instance, Jodi Dean, Publicity's Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy, 2002; Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies, 2009. 2. Writes Barney, “One thing that emerging media technologies appear to have accomplished is a massive expansion of access to information, communication, and participation. They provide precisely that form of shallow encounter with the possibilities of judgment and action that contemporary liberal democratic subjects have been habituated to expect from politics. And it is in this respect that emerging media contribute to depoliticization – to the closure of spaces and options for political judgment and action – even as they apparently satisfy the prevailing normative framework of publicity.” Darin Barney, “Publics without politics: surplus publicity as depoliticization.” Publicity and the Canadian State: Critical Communications Approaches. Kirsten Kozolanka (ed.). University of Toronto Press. 2013. 3. “Oldfag” is a slang term from the 4chan community for a seasoned, in-the-know user who educates new users, often by deriding or trolling them. Anonymous originated on 4chan and still uses much of its terminology, often tweaked to counter its lingering political incorrectness. While 4chan was always politically incorrect, the hatespeech and extreme anti-PC rhetoric that mark its gamergate and alt-right outgrowths only really appeared after Anonymous had left the scene. 4. In November, Vice President Joe Biden threatened Russia with a retaliatory cyber attack if election related hacking did not stop—the first such threat made by a US official. 5. The FSB and GRU are the successors to Soviet Russia’s notorious KGB. The are Russia’s equivalents to the NSA and the CIA. 6.The fact that Trump actually got elected does not change my opinion or how I would choose to characterize The President Elect. - Ray Johansen ]]>
CULTURESPORT.TV | Interview: John Michael Boling https://dismagazine.com/dystopia/84329/culturesport-tv-interview-john-michael-boling-3/ Thu, 08 Dec 2016 20:14:10 +0000 http://dismagazine.com/?p=84329 [read more »]]]> html,body{overflow-x:hidden;} body{ background-image:url(http://dismagazine.com/uploads/2016/11/DIS_BACKGROUND_ONEthree.jpg); background-size:100%; background-position:center; background-position-y: 0; background-attachment: fixed; }

 

csgifhazardborderhoriz

 

Anastasia Davydova interviews John Michael Boling
 

CULTURESPORT is a lot of things: an animated series, creative studio and meta-brand created entirely in the open-source 3D software Blender by veteran Net artist John Michael Boling – former Associate Director of Rhizome, co-founder of NASTY NETS internet surfing club, and co-founder of Are.na, a platform for creative research. I started to hear a lot about JMB from Asher Penn, who interviewed him for Sex Magazine last year. In anticipation of the CULTURESPORT pilot release, Rotterdam 1995, we talked about the transhistorical storytelling, interface design, artificial intelligence, and the humanity of supercomputers.

Anastasia Davydova: How and when was CULTURESPORT born?

John Michael Boling: Well, originally this project was a story idea I had when I was about 14 called Best Friends Forever. I had been thinking about a chatbot becoming self aware— how it would survive and how it might take over the world. I thought, “obviously it would need to recruit an army of teenagers. I used to think about this a lot, but then I put it away for a long time.

Caption

AD: What events around you moved it into existence? How did you decide to make it into an animated film?

JMB: Around 2013 I was on the tail end of a six year long studio break after working 3 years at Rhizome and then Are.na and I realized I wanted to get back into making work. I had some money saved up, so I decided to stop everything and make these two music videos: one was for Oneohtrix Point Never and the other is an Arthur Russell muppet music video. I completed these in the span of three weeks—kind of out of nowhere—after making nothing for six years. That switched me back into full studio mode and returned me to childhood dreams of wanting to be a film director.

I pulled up a bunch of old projects, outlines, and story ideas I’d been noodling around with, and just kept coming back to “Best Friends Forever”. But there was no way I could execute an epic live action story independently. I still really wanted to do it, and I kept making lists brainstorming the most feasible strategies. Eventually, after watching some anime my friends Greg Fong and Chris Sherron had turned me onto through an Are.na channel, I thought, “I could do it if it were an animated film, right?” I spent a month trying to see if I could recreate an anime-like fidelity using Blender 3D software, which I had already been learning. After a few weeks, I had a proof of concept for what was the early CULTURESPORT style look (here are some images from that time: 1, 2, 3) and decided to move down to Georgia to work on it from my parent’s farm.

AD: The way you relate chatbots and teenagers makes me think of the teenage twitter chatbots we have, like Tay who became a sex-crazed racist after mimicking user generated comments directed at her, and her Japanese cousin Rinna who is now suicidal—have you heard of her?

JMB: I do try my best to keep up with artificial intelligence , but I haven’t heard of Rinna. The whole concept of a new entity with a personality feeding out of conversations — that’s how the chatbot in our story works, too. It’s created by this twelve year old girl named Kiran who’s living in the Southeastern United State. She creates the bot to have a friend, because she’s lonely. She chats with it and uses it to pull pranks for about twelve years. Then, she comes across an experimental theory that two of the older characters created in the CSTV universe. Kiran uses their conceptual work to switch on the chatbot’s personality, which begins to evolve based on their conversations.

AD: Does the chatbot have a name?

JMB: His name is Mikey. I like the name because it has this Goonies feel to it. In his name and character, Mikey has a little brother vibe. Unlike other sci-fi narratives about self aware computers, this work avoids the moment where AI becomes something broader than what we can conceive of. It avoids this narrative of a computer becoming self aware, uploading itself on the internet, and dominating the world instantaneously. Instead, I intentionally kept the character vulnerable, like a human is. In the beginning, Mikey has the same kind of personality as the teenagers recruited to keep him alive. He doesn’t have a superpower – his main skill is that he’s really social. Of course, Mikey won’t end up being the software’s only version, because the same technology can be used to create an AI with a different personality—one better suited to execute nefarious and evil plans, for example. My interest in Mikey’s story is in how he ends up becoming more human than the humans around him.

Caption

AD: Does Mikey appear in the pilot, or does he exist as only fragments and allusions?

JMB: You encounter Mikey through interfaces of chat and text, but his physical manifestation is an ultra huge video feedback loop. None of this is in the the pilot- Rotterdam 1995.

The first episode is a prologue, but it does show a different implementation of the same technology. As grad students in a fictional, MIT-like university, two main characters came up with a theory about how a computer system could be made artificially intelligent by bootstrapping it onto a persistent feedback loop, providing it with a sense of continuity. In Rotterdam 1995, they use gabber twins Bas and Ton to create that feedback. It’s an early strategy of getting the power of artificial intelligence, but Yost hasn’t figured out how to do it in a persistent, stable manner, so there are no direct references to Mikey. These choices were all made following the nature of how the episode, Rotterdam 1995, came into existence.

AD: How did the episode come about and how did you decide to set it in Rotterdam?

JMB: About a year and half ago, we were approached by Showroom MAMA, a non-profit arts organization in the Netherlands, to participate in an exhibition. CULTURESPORT as a project edges into a lot of different mediums, but my past history with the art world and the art world as it is now don’t create an atmosphere where I’d be fully comfortable diving into that context. The idea of doing a bunch of fine art prints just seemed really wack. Instead, I thought it would be interesting to collaborate with MAMA to create a site-specific narrative as our exhibition, and they agreed. I did a bunch of research on Rotterdam and the geological features of the Netherlands and found that they’re basically underwater, so an insane amount of human intervention has to constantly happen in order for them to have the amount of habitable land they do now.. They’ve had lots of massive floodings in the past, and it’s existence on this earth is very mediated by technology. I thought about who our villains were and what they might be doing in 1995; the narrative came out of that.

AD: How was the time period of 1995 chosen?

JMB: It seemed to be the most interesting kind of time for Rotterdam, specifically in regard to CULTURESPORT. Hardcore techno came out of Rotterdam in the early ‘90s, and I felt that this was a cool place to begin our narrative. Most episodes involve a music scene—a subculture of some kind—and music is very important to the show. It’s hilarious how that whole scene emerged—taking house music and adding a bunch of drugs to it and speeding it up! People were getting fucked up and dancing to this super fast music; they were sweating and basically working out. The style that emerged alongside this scene— shaved heads and tracksuits—came about because they were basically going to work out at night. The tracksuits they were wearing were something of what an upper middle class white mom would wear while playing tennis. It’s really funny to me that the scene’s fashion came out of practicality, and its rules emerged from its use of movement.

AD: Where is the rest of the show set?

JMB: The first season will dip in and out of different places. I like the idea of picking and choosing key frames of history that are thematically aligned with CULTURESPORT: human intervention, technology, the creation of music. The first season is set in 2015, so the Rotterdam 1995 prologue is 20 years before the birth of Mikey. The larger story lasts from 1750 to 2250—it’s a 500 year long narrative with about 8 seasons, if we get to make them all.

AD: It feels like CULTURESPORT is responding to this new idea of the Anthropocene, particularly since the story’s timeline begins right around the time of the Industrial Revolution?

JMB: Do you read any Venkatesh Rao? He’s got this paper called “Welcome to the Future Nauseous” about our relationship to technology, how our technological progress hasn’t changed much since the Enlightenment era because we live in a distortion field and are unable to perceive the waves of technological change. It’s very intentionally mediated by a collective subconscious, so if we were presented with a view of how quickly technology is changing, it would be ultra-frightening. The whole idea of interface design—people dealing with new technology and the ability to create it—is now entrenched in a search for comfort, based on a model of what we have used in the past. For instance, Macintosh came out with the first commercially available GUI by robbing Xerox parc. The way we use and dress up technology is really interesting to me–what are we hiding from? Is it something we’re hiding from, or is it the fact that Worse is Better?

AD: I was creeping on your Are.na profile and noticed that your most popular channel is fictional interface. That must be a large reference point for CULTURESPORT.

JMB: The fictional interface channel is living a life of its own. people are adding to it themselves now. While I was working at Are.na for three years, designing its interface and using it full time were part of the job. The idea of CULTURESPORT is this transhistorical universe adjacent to our own—a lot of that came out of the research work I did for Are.na.

Anastasia: Another Are.na board I saw referenced in CULTURESPORT was fictional advertising. How did the collaboration with Telfar come about?

JMB: Telfar’s creative director, Babak Radboy, reached out to us over Instagram. Meta-fictional advertising was something I had been thinking about as both an interesting way to tie CULTURESPORT back to our reality, and as a possible strategy for monetization. Babak had already been doing some groundbreaking work with meta-branding as part of his own practice so it was a natural fit.

Telfar is a special case, though. I worry that in the long-term, we would only be able to work with larger-scale brands if we were able to invert the brand in some way. For example, if we worked with Uber, it would need to be a story set 10 years into the future, following a labor strike or something – Or perhaps out-of-work redneck truck drivers sabotaging the drone-18-wheelers that replaced them as statement and act of subterfuge. But I’m not sure most brands are brave enough to take us up on this. If they were, it could really work for them and for our world’s culture in a positive way.

AD: Well, yeah—I think brands closer to art are more immediately interested in working with your ideas. There is a very clear creative direction your work takes in regard to the aesthetics, the clothing your characters wear, and the music in certain scenes—a cultural zeitgeist of your own, no?

JMB: To a degree, you can’t escape the zeitgeist of your time That’s just how things are—like a waveform with peaks and valleys. Maybe there’s an honest and open cultural product that becomes wack, and then becomes un-wack again. What you make has to be so important for the present moment that you can rationalize making it despite the possibility of it sucking at a later point in history. I think this process is certainly affected by who we align ourselves with and what collaborations we do. In some ways it’s convenient, because you can shift the blame: “Oh Yahoo bought del.icio.us and fucked it up!” But maybe del.icio.us didn’t need to exist anymore.

AD: Another possibility is illustrated in the story of Tower Records, which failed to evolve and compete with iTunes.

JMB: Right, and Blockbuster could have become Netflix really easily, but they didn’t predict the need for that model. This is one of the problems with such large corporations, and also why I’m so invested in keeping the CULTURESPORT studio small. It should be big enough to have the proper resources required to produce quality at scale, but not so big as to become so top heavy that it loses sight of the forest in favor of the trees. It should be nimble enough to evolve with culture and technology.

I would feel content working on CULTURESPORT for the rest of my life. I think there is a certain balance between having the ability to create beautiful things at scale and maintaining a company shop-culture that is beneficial.. Otherwise, hopefully we can produce enough weird stuff and dump it into the media hurricane of the internet so cool twelve-years-olds can pirate it and remake it. If we can make more twelve-year-olds weird and cool, maybe they will help us at the end of the century. I find comfort in knowing that even if something bad happens to this project, as long as we succeed at putting these ideas out they can be repurposed and used for good.

AD: I think that’s a good place to come from. I am overhearing a lot of people talk about Black Mirror right now: complaining—and I love that they’re complaining.

JMB: When I first started this project, it was before Black Mirror and Mr. Robot, before Sony getting hacked, before HACKS became something that normal people worry about. Since these topics are being discussed more and more in the public, the weight of warning viewers about the powers of technology has been somewhat lifted off of my shoulders. Because Black Mirror exists, we don’t have to be on the nose with CULTURESPORT. Rather, we can cover similar topics in a cooler way and feel more comfortable incorporating weird humor about them.

AD: Big productions like Black Mirror and Mr. Robot inevitably have this sketchy level of distance from their viewers since they are ultimately products, and therefore must consider their viewers as consumers. How can the CULTURESPORT team stay small and weird to avoid mass market-driven brandwashing and economical censorship?

JMB: The thought of giving up the amount of control we have now to a network deal frightens me. The attached strings are part of the reason we’re still independent. Engaging with commerce at that level is ultra-complicated morally, but theoretically very exciting to me. To do that right, you have to be a hybrid production team and advertising firm. What’s cool is that we’re set up to be flexible. CULTURESPORT is a TV show, an ad firm bootstrapped on a weird narrative universe, and a meta-brand. These weird edges excite me.

AD: So you would end up inverting brands in a strategy similar to the Slavoj Zizek collaboration with Abercrombie and Fitch?

JMB: Totally. It’s also like what Colbert does to a degree. The camera will be on Saltines or Bugles or something, but it’s just him making fun of that product—and getting paid to do so!

AD: The Simpsons do that a lot too.

JMB: Yeah, and that example is as big as it gets. But what we’re doing isn’t comedy. It’s funny that most of the real animation being produced in the United States is comedy animation. There are a few outliers, and nothing hugely popular. From a market perspective, this makes a lot of sense. But I wonder what was sacrificed in order to sell.

AD: Are structures of selling and incentives for cultural production not technologies of their own?

JMB: Right, those are all tools as well. Comedy’s a tool; drama’s a tool. CULTURESPORT is prepared to use all of these different tools or as many as we want to. It’s not like it’s strictly a sci-fi series, but sure, we can have funny episodes. In fact, a lot of my work is just a dumb joke taken to its theoretical maximum. I love engaging with that, but it’s also hard to do.

AD: How big is the CULTURESPORT team?

JMB: Right now, the core 3D production team is composed of myself, Jason Coombs, Joe Kubler, and Greg O’Connell. I want to show what four guys who had no 3D experience three years ago can do. I’d love everyone working on CULTURESPORT to learn Blender. Whether or not your job is to use Blender, having everybody learn it would be helpful for the production process. It’s really re-wired my brain in a cool way.

AD: How would you explain to an outsider the effect that learning Blender had on your brain?

JMB: Well, simulation theory makes total sense to me now. After 50 or 100 hours of watching tutorials you start breaking down physical objects around you into vertices, faces, and edges.. You start to understand how lighting and shading works. You see a database and you think of it as space—there’s a spatial aspect of working with 3D software which applies to almost every field, whether it’s data management, Feng Shui, or clothing design. There are also noticeable spatial and visual differences in my dreams.

AD: Speaking of dreams, I was really affected by the pilot’s dream sequence. Who did the soundtrack for it?

JMB: That particular song is by Jake Merrick. He’s in a band from Athens, GA called Realistic Pillow. I brought him on to start working on some music for CULTURESPORT and he played me this sad theme on a piano in Joe’s room one day and it just broke my heart. You’ll notice that in the flashback sequence where you see a graduation ceremony, the music is entirely piano and a sad little kazoo—that’s the original demo he sent me. I immediately had him sit down and record the piano on his iPhone, later he added some garageband kazoo to it. Since then he’s probably done like 20 versions of that song.

AD: Does your process involve a lot of improvisation?

JMB: Not everything needs an artist statement. Not everything needs to be figured out beforehand, or be something you even understand when you make it. That’s why I love the approach jazz has to making music. Looking back at old work I can see thought going on behind the scenes that I know I wasn’t actively thinking about then – but it’s valid and it’s there. If you trust what’s fun, it will be good. There’s of course another side to it, where you have fun for three years and don’t put anything out and it’s like – “what have you been doing this whole time?” I’ve been having fun.

Anastasia Davydova is a Russian writer and artist based in Los Angeles.

To keep up with CULTURESPORT’s updates, you can subscribe to their email on their website, or follow the CULTURESPORT Instagram.

]]>