2. TH: In your work, Geschlechtsergge,
you have cleverly used the photography of Magnus Hirshfeld
to emphasis the history of homosexuality, the biased
psychological experimentation of the third sex, and the
awareness of social discrimination against the status
of gay men. What is intriguing about this work is that
you have compared two images shot in different time periods
to illustrate the developments of social perceptions
on homosexuality from the past to the present. However,
my question is -- do you think the message that your
portraying will sustain itself - will people have the
vocabulary to comprehend these montages and will this
vocabulary carry forward in time as technologies and
ideologies change. Any comment or thoughts about this
would be most welcome.
BE: A self-contradicting doubling is explored in Geschlechtsergge
where
two images from opposite ends of the twentieth century
are brought together. This piece juxtaposes a 1906 photograph
by the pioneering German sexologist Magnus Hirshfeld
of an effeminate she-man and one of a hulking, naked
modern-day he-man lifted from the Internet. As a living
specimen, the invert is neither wholly man nor woman
and bolsters the doctor's theory of the third sex as
an early rationale for the sympathetic treatment of homosexuals.
He stands in profile, held motionless by a steel brace
up his spine. The stud confronts the viewer head-on but
is equally trapped inside the sprocketed framework of
a filmstrip. Paradoxically, while the piece is almost
pretty in appearance, its inherent voyeuristic and objectified
approach is the hallmark of clinical medical and psycho/sociological
research that continues to shadow gay men. Comforting
as it is to think of gay history as a series of ever
expanding victories away from a culture that was once
unforgiving and intolerant, we confuse tolerance with
equality and are in danger of falling into the smug delusion
that every advance is a permanent one. Our history is
something more fluid. Drawn largely from my gay archive
collection, the 1994 "Becoming Visible" exhibition
at the New York Public Library documented how our present
relative safety and well-being has been matched or exceeded
in other places and at other times. The sophistication
of Poitiers in the 1150s, London in the 1890s, or Berlin,
Paris, and Harlem in the 1920s seemed permanent, only
to be destroyed by events beyond our control. The distancing
of time and geography have made it easy to overlook that
current political discourse often echoes a chilling past.
While the rise of neo-Nazi hoodlums and organized militia
groups and various flavors of religious fundamentalism
are alarming, such grotesqueries of the hard right parody
maleness while serving as handmaidens for more socially
acceptably banal, groomed, and media-savvy elected officials
with popular, bureaucratically inflexible programs. Even
with its incomprehensible title (drawn from one of Hirshfeld's
published works, and roughly translating as "Transformation"),
it suggests the heavy baggage of 20th century history
and plays into the subverbal shock of recognition for
every gay man. Regardless of our general lack of historical
literacy, every gay man is aware of his perpetual outsider
status.
3. TH: The medium of photography is associated with
the archive - with typologies and other documentation
processes.
Why have you selected to use photography for this current
body - do you see the index being a key motif in your
visual classification of your subject?
BE: The evolution of
my own work, I can see now in retrospect, has been in
line with the evolution of contemporary Canadian
art over the last thirty years. While the history of
photography is a parallel history, my involvement has
been to move from the dematerialization of conceptual
art through performance art toward using photo-based
work as a conceptual tool to investigate and critique
the charged relationships between voyeurism, public display,
male vanity, sexuality, and doctrinaire political extremism.
While I now work exclusively with digital tools, both
ink jet outputs and CD-ROM projections, the vast majority
of digital work out there is beneath contempt. There
is a faux-trendiness to the use of new media, and I suspect
that the accompanying techno-dazzle is a convenient disguise
for conceptual bankruptcy. As simulators of painting,
most new media artists defensively side-step the interestingly
political and conceptual question of visual reliability.
Much of the relevant photo-based work in Canada has followed
the same time-line, and while it is seldom as butch and
antagonistic as some of my investigations, there is a
clear tendency to follow the influences of contemporary
art rather than the influences of the history of photography.
Thus there is less of a problem for artists using photo-based
means being viewed on equal footing with painters, which
happens so often in other places.
4. TH: Are there any artists and/or movements that have
influenced your working strategies to date. I was wondering
if you
have ever thought of yourself in relation to artists
like Evergon and Robert Mapplethorpe?
BE: While my "tastes" tend
to be wildly schizophrenic and almost self-negating,
there are three whom I find
inspiring. Gilbert and George from the UK, and George
Platt Lynes (who worked in the US from the
1930s-50s) interest me very much both for the collaborative
nature of the former and the bravery of the second who
was clearly a role model for the more sexually charged
movement of physique photographers in the 40s and 50s.
While the political environments they operated in are
very different, all were able to make unabashedly homoerotic
work. Lynes (and his followers) faced serious legal censure
from the intolerance of the time and the G and G duo
have been able to forge a very successful career in an
artworld that is still shamefully and hypocritically
homophobic. I had met Robert Maplethorpe just prior to
his death, and as an art director tethorpe just prior to
his death, and as an art director throughout the 1980s
was very aware of his presence and influence. It's interesting
to note that, while his reputation has taken somewhat
of a beating in the subsequent years, he looked to the
men working in the physique tradition for inspiration.
My favourite body of Mapplethorpe's work was the "X
Portfolio" which detailed the often baroque sexual
practices of backroom New York and were so controversial
at the time that they were withdrawn from public view
for years. A third favorite is the use of web design
by artists entering into the democratic free-for-all
of the Internet. The form offers the potential to increase
the viewership of contemporary art practice exponentially
while at the same time the form subverts the sell or
die ethos of the commercial marketplace. The conceptualists
from the 60s and 70s attempted this through other means,
but the market quickly subsumed their efforts. It is
rather amusing to watch museums scrambling to accommodate
web-based work in a fruitless attempt to place parameters
around something that is by its very nature open-ended
(during the same period that the commercial potential
for the Internet crashed in flames). The more recent
work that I'm particularly attracted to are by the so-called "YBAs",
that group of sarcastic provocateurs from London who
seem to follow the maxim by Theodor Adorno that the Holocaust
made poetry impossible. Poetry is still possible, its
just not reassuring anymore.
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