Envy (Invidia)
Gluttony (Gula)
Wrath (Ira)
Greed (Avaritia)
Sloth (Acedia)
Lust (Luxuria)
Pride (Superbia)
Part of my on-going investigations of queer abstraction; images made in Elysian Park.
After reading and commenting on Nicholas' post on Phenomenology and the Body, I thought I'd type a few words here on mutable spaces. Back in the old days, when people lived in tenement housing, the city's public spaces functioned as a kind of living room: it afforded the privacy that crowded housing did not, and also offered an aesthetic space for courting. The city's parks offered different use functions at different times and in different eras. A shaded lawn could be a picnic place, a sports field, or a cruising zone, depending on the weather and time of day.
For closeted types or the generally horny, parks again function as a space for a type of courting, one that is consummated immediately, on the spot. The bucolic atmosphere moves one's thoughts away from urban life and the social conventions that are inextricably tied to it. Over the years I've crossed paths with deer, coyotes, raccoons, skunks, opossums and the like. For the most part, the men--like the animals--are foraging and rutting about wordlessly. When encountering a wild animal, most will move away, avoiding any form of confrontation. Likewise the cruiser crossing paths with a breeder couple or jogger: they will move away, deeper into the bush.
Sexual encounters will take place in cave-like arboreal enclaves, identifiable by their litter of paper napkins and used condoms. These become the territorial markings, like the piss of the male mammals that share the space. Deterritorialization occurs between the men of different ethnicities and socio-economic classes. Since language is kept to a minimum, recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America can easily hook up with native-born monolinguals, and vice-versa. The men are on foot, and flashy symbols of wealth that may invite muggings are left behind. Clothing is functional: dark colors to blend with the cover of darkness, boots or sneakers to negotiate the muddy hillsides, and jeans that can take a little dirt ground into the knees.
Each man is inside their own head, channeling their primitive state: being cognizant of their surroundings, lusting, coveting, projecting fantasies onto the surrounding bodies, taking (or being taken).
In the times the government is flush with cash and elected officials channel their repressed homosexuality into moral outrage, undercover vice are sent in to entrap these men. by signaling back in kind, police are able to lure these men into private locations and situations where they will expose themselves, and thereby be arrested. Counter measures of resistance are available to the cruisers. Some sites have 'watch queens,' regulars who will point out undercover police to the other players. Some men will wait for the other guy to show themselves first, or attempt to kiss their prospective partner, a non-prosecutable offence. Others make sure that their prey is alone, and not keeping in periodic eye contact with another cruiser (because undercover vice never work alone). In the summertime, cruisers can be checked for a string around their neck (which holds a police badge under their T-shirt) or the outline of handcuffs in a pocket.
For the most part, these areas and men are left to fend for themselves, without government intervention. Cash-strapped municipalities and socially liberal elected officials will do that. Unlike the urban areas that surround the park, they tend to be self-regulating and rarely elicit complaints from the non-players.
Since I mentioned place as well as the body as a starting point (to move away from) with queer abstraction, I thought this would be a good segue for Nicholas to expound a bit about Eduard Carpenter.
After reading and commenting on Nicholas' post on Phenomenology and the Body, I thought I'd type a few words here on mutable spaces. Back in the old days, when people lived in tenement housing, the city's public spaces functioned as a kind of living room: it afforded the privacy that crowded housing did not, and also offered an aesthetic space for courting. The city's parks offered different use functions at different times and in different eras. A shaded lawn could be a picnic place, a sports field, or a cruising zone, depending on the weather and time of day.
For closeted types or the generally horny, parks again function as a space for a type of courting, one that is consummated immediately, on the spot. The bucolic atmosphere moves one's thoughts away from urban life and the social conventions that are inextricably tied to it. Over the years I've crossed paths with deer, coyotes, raccoons, skunks, opossums and the like. For the most part, the men--like the animals--are foraging and rutting about wordlessly. When encountering a wild animal, most will move away, avoiding any form of confrontation. Likewise the cruiser crossing paths with a breeder couple or jogger: they will move away, deeper into the bush.
Sexual encounters will take place in cave-like arboreal enclaves, identifiable by their litter of paper napkins and used condoms. These become the territorial markings, like the piss of the male mammals that share the space. Deterritorialization occurs between the men of different ethnicities and socio-economic classes. Since language is kept to a minimum, recent immigrants from Asia and Latin America can easily hook up with native-born monolinguals, and vice-versa. The men are on foot, and flashy symbols of wealth that may invite muggings are left behind. Clothing is functional: dark colors to blend with the cover of darkness, boots or sneakers to negotiate the muddy hillsides, and jeans that can take a little dirt ground into the knees.
Each man is inside their own head, channeling their primitive state: being cognizant of their surroundings, lusting, coveting, projecting fantasies onto the surrounding bodies, taking (or being taken).
In the times the government is flush with cash and elected officials channel their repressed homosexuality into moral outrage, undercover vice are sent in to entrap these men. by signaling back in kind, police are able to lure these men into private locations and situations where they will expose themselves, and thereby be arrested. Counter measures of resistance are available to the cruisers. Some sites have 'watch queens,' regulars who will point out undercover police to the other players. Some men will wait for the other guy to show themselves first, or attempt to kiss their prospective partner, a non-prosecutable offence. Others make sure that their prey is alone, and not keeping in periodic eye contact with another cruiser (because undercover vice never work alone). In the summertime, cruisers can be checked for a string around their neck (which holds a police badge under their T-shirt) or the outline of handcuffs in a pocket.
For the most part, these areas and men are left to fend for themselves, without government intervention. Cash-strapped municipalities and socially liberal elected officials will do that. Unlike the urban areas that surround the park, they tend to be self-regulating and rarely elicit complaints from the non-players.
Since I mentioned place as well as the body as a starting point (to move away from) with queer abstraction, I thought this would be a good segue for Nicholas to expound a bit about Eduard Carpenter.
What led you to pair the scans of Elysian detritus with the seven deadlys? Sin is something projected through a lens of objectification and the seven, unlike other (smaller) sins, which I see as being more ambient and a little less defined.
ReplyDeleteWhen speaking of the seven we have pictures that come to mind that correlate with the words themselves: a fat man, a slob...But like numbers the seven sins don't carry the gusto without numerals to place hold in context what the abstract conception of them purports. The symbols "7", "seven", "VII" and "......." all aim at grounding the abstract of the thing.
Picturing the seven may have developed out of church iconography. If a serf can picture Noah and his flood he can be wowed by it and at the same time fearful of it. A little sublime moment.
You've lifted the seven lens and pointed it at an instance of the "deplorable" by societal standards. The description of undercovers rings like the Inquisition. But in order to be thorough and encompassing you use all the seven and give names to them through the scans which don't so much picture the thing, but the application/objectification of it.
Some are simpler (more easily associative) than others. Envy and Pride are the most confusing/frustrating. I imagine the black bandanna is significant to Wrath. Is Lust named because of the visible excess of condoms and wrappers? I could see Gluttony fitting with that image. I associate the name you've given to Sloth as someone who uses bed springs out in the park because he isn't interested in the adventure of roughing it and wants his bedroom surface?
For a catholic, to consider the seven is to consider how to fit (squeeze) them into his/her world context. A Franciscan monk interprets them differently than a clerk living in rural Pittsburgh. And this is what is interesting because these seven are the deadly ones, the big no-no's. They carry the same ending, but are considered through objectifications in context. You've named these, but do these scans name the seven? This, I could say, is your context and your objectification; are you going more to hell? One of the issues with the seven is that they supposedly cannot mingle, but your outline is that they do when guys visit Elysian.
Adam~
ReplyDeleteThe titling came after the fact. The day of Nicholas' opening we went to Chinatown to check out the Darren Almond video, and then up to Elysian Park to take some pictures. I'll let Nicholas post on his motivations for image taking, but mine were partly experiments with my new imaging device, and also a riff on his Phenomenology post. If D&G talk about Bodies without Organs, I thought I'd scan some evidence of (sexual) organs without bodies. There is also my interest in these mutable spaces, which speaks more to deterritorialization in the anthropological sense.
My understanding of the seven (sometimes eight) cardinal sins is that they speak more to a taxonomy and point to the underlying motivations. Like the Kingdom of Animalia includes wombats, duck billed platapi, and Adam Feldmeth, the 'kingdom' of gluttony includes subcategories like eating too much, too soon, too eagerly, etc. In some ways the Catholic church's typology of underlying motivations seems almost proto-Freudian.
At the park I was scanning and thinking of the detritus as evidence of peoples' desires. After I had a chance to download and look at my images on the computer, I saw of typologies, which led to the titling.
I agree that something like "VIII" can signify the concept of 'seveness' without the gusto of the thing being counted, but that's because VIII or 7 are fungible devices that can point to anything. [tangent] Did you see Obama's video interview at the NY Times site? He used the word fungible. I can't imagine our current president ever saying that word--with his alcoholic slur--let alone understanding it. [end tangent]
Getting back to your comments...
I don't think I'm pointing out an "instance of the 'deplorable' by societal standards." The actions that take place have gone on since prehistory and will continue until we extinguish our species. "Deplorable" is a tightly focused lens that points to different behaviors in different eras by different cultures. Slavery was an accepted practice by the god of the Old Testament; homosexuality was an accepted practice in Edo Japan before their exposure (and infatuation with) British imperialism and Victorian norms.
Envy is the discarded box for a porn movie. You can see a boy's face in the upper left corner. I see envy (and jealousy) as frustrated desires that can't be satisfied; porn can be seen as a manifestation of a frustrated desire for the real thing. Pride is the scan of a partially burned and rotted pair of jeans; top center is a belt loop. If you click on the images they'll open full size for better effect.
Black bandanna in gay handkerchief code is "heavy S&M." Lust has the clearest image of a condom; it's fresh, and glistens with semen. After a few days they look like the condoms in the upper right corner of Gluttony. I see beds as representative of slothy places. The actual beds in the park were brought by homeless people who had encampments in the park. They were driven out years ago, but the trash was never cleaned up. So my personal read of the mattress is of someone who is 'roughing it,' and probably not by choice.
I'll save my thoughts on (the need for) the cultural construction of hell for a latter post.
Yes, I can see the boy, the jeans, and the semen. For some reason with all the scans I never bother dealing with them at full size, I must be accustom to the way you usually use images in your posts as referential to the topic at hand.
ReplyDeleteThe thought of using "deplorable" came from an interpretation of "repressed homosexuality into moral outrage".
I was listening to a Howard Hodgkin interview this morning when asked how he described his work he rejected the word "abstract" and "abstraction" stating that he paints "representations of emotional states". Now, this at first sounds all too much like semantics, but it requires increasingly more effort on his part when it comes to the production of a work. And it struck me that, as he sees it, his work acts as a deterritorialization of abstraction, as you brought up in Nicholas' Phenom.Body post.