Reply to Robert Schubert

Dear Robert,

I am responding today because BAD GAY ART was/is on my mind. This post/open letter is more tribute to the show rather than a response to your generous comment in late January. Of course this is threaded through my personal recollections of that show - presented by the Sydney’s Mardi Gras in 1997. You probably also have to imagine that this email has been sent by ship (a slow ship with wharf disputations at both sides of the exchange.)

You wrote:

I am interested in the comment you make about BAD GAY ART was really bad. Has the point lost its irony? The show was after all a conceit in the literary sense of the term.

Someone from the reading group was referring to Dean Kiley’s writing style rather than the show itself. It was unfortunate that adequate visual documentation wasn’t presented alongside the essays. I should have done a ring-around but I guess the focus in some ways was on the writing. Kiley’s work divided audiences and was a product of its time (regarding this position). While he didn’t write much art criticism - when he did it was with a wit/intellectual rigour/layered fondue quality we rarely see in Melbourne (that’s my position). Maybe Christopher Chapman, Justin Clemens and Juliana Engberg are doing it. Although all without the layering of cream, voices, hyphens, brackets and slashes.

I think your way of introducing the show, its artists, writer and context was a strategy of openness. Positing a tangential but pertinent suggestion for future elaboration that would include a grass-root expression of cock and ass art. Maybe the net is a proliferating site for this type of cultural production that is absent from ‘serious’ art institutions outside of the Midsumma or Mardi Gras period. (Could an imaginary and gay Jeremy Deller’s Folk Archive be a half way house or where you pre-empting Scott Redford’s clown porn work?) (The question then is: who is the author of this folk archive?) I guess my project - WITHOUT was trying to self-consciously reply to the question of community participation that you (humorously) suggest in BAD GAY ART’s sequel and the challenges posed by the actual physical manifestations of Redford, McQualter and Meads’ work. Although projects like the Log Cabin, The Name of this Show: Gay Art Now and more locally the Wild Boys seem to be more recent attempts to (- like Juan Davila) use “the gay body in a hypercritical way.”


I haven’t seen the Juan Davila show at the MCA but am excited by its impending NGV incarnation and the dialogue that this might provoke. Something is definitely in the air at the moment with GCS doing a forum on DRAG/MASH and Turbulence on Thursday night (well maybe that's a tenuous link as its more about collage tendencies or what Bourriaud considers post-production than Clinger in drag in war zone) and the recent furore at the art fair. All signs are leading to a resurgent questioning of the ethics / process / context of representing identity with or without the body. My issue with all of this is that we shouldn’t be trying to re-invent the wheel on this one (in the art community at least) - but use the theory, practice and activism of the past 40 years as building blocks for future articulations. I also think engaging with the question of who owns these marginal representations (indigenous, sub-cultural or gay) is an interesting area and while in the 80’s and 90’s it was clear, things have definitely become murkier or maybe more complicated. This could be a good thing. It will be interesting to see how Felix Gonzalez Torres’ survey at the Hamburger Bahnhof will be re-visited and received considering these issues that are old but new again.

But back to BAD GAY ART and my fond musings: Meade’s comic book scaled broom that set up a narrative between Redford’s lollies that weren’t there to begin with; the lollies themselves only referenced by a provisionally painted shadow or a Torres after-glow; Meade’s abstracted go-go dancers turned giant 70’s décor or boubouniera ignoring the pathos between Keanu crying for River; MacQualter’s beige banality that turned designer creche and the lip-stick intervention turning the sign into BAD GAY FART. So thank you for facilitating these relationships between these works, words and ideas and allowing me to indulge them in this letter.

Your’s sincerely,

Spiros

PS. I am going to scan the catalogue and hopefully in time I will be able to source some actual documentation of the show – considering Monash has decided not keep the archive of Globe e-journal alive.

Dear Nikos(email)

hey - good to hear from you - wish you were here - actually whenever I install I think - Nikos could give me a hand - a thought maybe - if he wasn’t on the other side of the world - like today - i was installing the curtains - which are a real fuck - gaps emerged between the sheets of fabric - allowing people to peak in – Duchamp Entant Donnes(y) style – not what I was going for – although it did cross my mind and that is why I needed an ear – I’m scared Bianca and Scott will put out a restraining order out - I'll save this for the blog....Regarding homo/hetero divide – ‘Not sures’ are very welcome inside – isn’t the ‘non-box’ box of queer about the negation of binaries - and this game I’m playing with inclusion and exclusion is only supposed to elicit this very discussion and question who is the audience and who are the participants. I’m only replicating for the audience the exhibiting context that Gertrude St has set up in a way. This festival has sexuality as its foundation - which is as stupid as it is fantastic, affirming and defiant. Well - maybe we can talk during the weekend - after the curtains are up - thanks for the typo advice – if you see any more, you know who to email - love and kisses to Lino - happy new year - x

CLUBSproject feedback with Midsumma Visual Arts Working Group and friends.

Dear Midsumma Visual Arts Working Group and its friends,

Jeff or myself might have mentioned this to you at some stage. I wanted to coordinate an activity for the Visual Arts Working Group and also have a queer identifying CLUBSfeedback session for my project that occupies the front window space of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces that is titled WITHOUT. So I have decided to combine the two (with drinks). For those unfamiliar with this type of feedback session – a brief description follows:
 
CLUBfeedback has developed as a form of peer-based dialogue about art since 2002, adopted but also adapted by CLUBSproject inc from its initial educational context. The focus of these sessions is to explore and analyse through conversation the ‘work’ of an artwork: to investigate how an artwork functions, and how it operates within, and in relation to, its context. Attention is placed on the relationships internal to the artwork, as well as the relations that the artwork produces. What we are interested in is an artworks materiality as it relates to and generates conceptual, speculative, theoretical, imaginative, political and social lines of inquiry. (Text developed by Terri Bird and Bianca Hester)

The sessions usually take an hour and a half and takes place at the site of the work. Jeff will be the facilitator of the feedback.

As you know the gallery space is closed during the period of the Midsumma program and some of the activities and objects in the space won't be accessible to a general public due to the windows being covered by a blind like material. The interior can only be occupied by queer identifying people during the project and by appointment only.  A blog: www.with-out.blogspot.com is a part of the project which exposes aspects of the activities inside the space. It might be valuable for the feedback for you to visit the blog site before attending the session.

The night I have put aside for this meeting is Friday 27th January at 6:15 pm for a start of 6:30 pm . I do hope you can make it. It would also be very helpful if you could confirm your attendance via email. If you have any questions regarding this activity don’t hesitate to give me call.

Best ,

Spiros Panigirakis

Poster Ideas for Kate

Hi Kate

Just getting back to you with some preliminary ideas for the poster. I have come up with 4 ideas for the general conceptual framework. These are by no means fixed or rendered in any finished manner and are just starting off points. I had a bit of difficulty with your concept as I couldn't come up with an idea that dealt with the different facets of the issues you raised.

So what I've come  up with are slogans that are calls to unionism targeted to the queer community. There's no implicit attack on the Howard government's IR changes or the tokenism of their inclusion of same-sex couples of carer's leave arrangements. This seemed a bit complex for a poster. So the idea is to for the poster by a kind of add for the ACTU Workers line - which apparently points fucked-over workers toward a relevant union. I've chosen not to create an illustration for your poster as I think the immediacy of the textual slogan has a t-shirt style retro appeal. I'm thinking of those Wham-esque 'Choose Life' or those 'Italians/Greeks do it better' T-shirts that were all the rage in 1986. Although come to think of it - it might be interesting if I allign the slogan with a badly traced and rendered sexed-up lifestyle photograph that plays at illustrating the text. Give me a few days to come up with some examples.

If we went with the sex-themed ideas like "groups do it better," "touch one touch all" (which you probably know is a slogan already used by the CFMEU) or "Protect Yourself" (a cliched safe sex message recontextualised). I thought it might be fun to place the poster near the Porter Street sauna - up to you.

It would be great to get some feedback ­ brief and blunt will do. Either on the blog (with-out.blogspot.com or via email is all fine.) I understand it's Summer and there's a lot of relaxing that needs doing.

Hope things are going well.

Best,

Spiros

Poster Ideas for Felicity

Hi Felicity,

Just getting back to you with some preliminary ideas for the poster. I have come up with 4 ideas for the general conceptual framework. These are by no means fixed or rendered in any finished manner and are just a starting off points. In consideration of the site for the poster (Family First territory or around the Family Association) I think that a poster that leads the audience to the ‘Love Makes a Family’ website might be an interesting strategy. Innocuous image that leads them to some family friendly homo-loving.

I primarily focused on the phrase ‘Love Makes a Family’ and couldn’t get the free-loving aspect out of my head and that’s the rationalisation behind the lava-lamp, potentially psychedelic love heart wall paper – think red, yellow brown. But by the far the more graphic and I think more successful option is the fold out people chain. I loved the idea when you relayed it to me in our meeting because it proposes an endless and extended community as family. It also can represent LGBTI relationships in a really succinct and diverse manner. The potential problems are: representation of gender gets confined to a sort of stereotype – although I have tried to counter this problem with different types of clothing and angles for body features and those scribbles on the heads are attempts to add further diversity via hairstyle; the fact the lines are mixed gender/sex might suggest a watering down of the issue (but within those lines there are same-sex attracted pairs or trios) and finally it might be too oblique.

It would be great to get some feedback – brief and blunt will do. Either on the blog (with-out.blogspot.com or more privately via email is all fine.) I understand it’s Summer and there’s a lot of relaxing that needs doing.

Hope things are going well.

Best,

Spiros

Poster Ideas for Mark

Hi Mark,

Just getting back to you with some preliminary ideas for the poster. I have come up with 4 ideas for the general conceptual framework. These are by no means fixed or rendered in any finished manner and are just starting off points. Yours is the poster I started off with and was confronted by the need to represent something very literally, when I am accustomed to being quite abstract and some would say obtuse in my visual representations. So I have swung the other way and gone with some cheesy clichés in a way – hopefully I have flipped them a bit. I am also working within a very illustrative framework as I am thinking ahead with how I would render the posters with blocks of texta and coloured paper.

1. The Detention Centre: This probably isn’t the design or text I would be going for in the finished version. Probably quite a graphic close-up of barbed wire would be enough. The accompanying text is meant to be a ‘queer eye for straight guy’ type of conversation between two inmates – probably the clumsiest option. Maybe something about navy never going with black would be more apt fashion advice. (???)

2. The hanging: There would be interesting incongruent quality between the serious image and the whimsical illustrative method it would be rendered in.

3. This a fishing vessel in Mardi gras float drag. Ignore the text, as it’s just explanatory as the thumbnail sketch is quite vague. Essentially trying to communicate that refugees arriving in this country don’t need be sailing on a float to gain refugee status on the basis of homo persecution. 4. A bland Lego-type guy (I was thinking of a figure with no overt pop-cultural baggage) being knocked back from a “market; type of night-club called (Aust) ralia. My thinking this scenario is all about prejudice, surfaces and fickle nature of representation that is required by the refugee review tribunal. I don’t know about this one.

It would be great to get some feedback – brief and blunt will do. Either on the blog (with-out.blogspot.com or more privately via email is all fine.) I understand it’s summer and there’s a lot of relaxing that needs doing.

Hope things are going well

Best,

Spiros

Access

Hey Sheah,

Hope the last email with the volunteer letter reached you ok - got a project update that might help with (do we call it) PR.

People can access the space in a way but they must call me first. This is to ensure that I am in the space and/or not hosting another activity. (Gertrude don't want to be the door people or minders of the show - so there can't be any door knocking - but I'll be putting up a sign stating as much.) I am  also developing a tele-marketing spiel that vets the straights from acessing the space. I also kinda want visitors to not to be passive voyeurs - they can do this with the web-blog - so interacting is the thing:

reading - from the reader;
chain and party hat making;
model float making.

So in short my temporary mobile number can be advertised with the above proviso - I think maybe the words 'by appointment' could be used.
 
0434553717

Hope this hasn't been too much information - thanks a lot for your help.

Cheers

Spiros

Reading group

Hey readers, (Marcus, Alex, Jeff, Alicia, Salote, Rob and Andrew)

You've got the readers. Now here is the hard bit - arranging a time to meet - I think two sessions for the project is adequate - I'm thinking morning (say 9:30 am) due to my assumption that some people work in the afternoon. But believe me - after lunch is good too (say 1pm) - just depends on consensus.

Just to get the ball rolling I am proposing

Thursday 19th January
Tuesday 24th January
And lets have as a back up
Friday 27th January

It might be impossible to get all readers at Gertrude St at the same time so if we can aim for two sessions over the three dates, that might be an idea too.

SO CHOOSE DATES THEN CHOOSE TIME - and get back to me

As for the reader itself - yes it's a bit chunky but I had this magical photocopier at Officeworks that continually gave me free photocopying and I thought some of the text work so well together - who could resist. This free-loving-photocopying attitude might not be practical for discussion so I was thinking if we can prioritise a few of the texts. (Just in case you're short on Summer reading time.)

Australia Queer (Chris Berry & Annamarie Jagose)
Against Proper Objects (Judith Butler)
Bad Gay Art (Dean Kiley)
Epistemology of the Closet (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick)
Down There (Catherine Lord)
Normalizing Transgression (David M Halperin)

If anyone is busting for the whole group to read something else from reader then send an email to the group and we'll take it from there.

We can use the rest to pepper conversation in a more individual manner.

Hope your summer is going well...hope to hear from you real soon re: dates/times and those helmet ideas from those who I haven't yet heard from.

Cheers Spiros

CLUBSproject feedback session

2nd January 2006
 
Dear friends, colleagues and acquaintances,
 
As you might know I am currently working on WITHOUT a project for the front window space of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. The project is part of Midsumma – Melbourne’s gay and lesbian festival. As the gallery space is closed during this period some of the activities and objects in the space won't be accessible to a general public due to the windows being covered by a blind like material. A blog: www.with-out.blogspot.com trades in public disclosure/exposure/restraint, exclusion and inclusion by offering a type of unfettered access to the project. I am writing to invite you to participate in a CLUBproject feedback session for this project. The sessions usually take a couple of hours and take place at the site of the work (200 Gertrude Street). For those unfamiliar with this type of feedback session – a brief description follows:
 
"CLUBfeedback has developed as a form of peer-based dialogue about art since 2002, adopted but also adapted by CLUBSproject inc from its initial educational context. The focus of these sessions is to explore and analyse through conversation the ‘work’ of an artwork: to investigate how an artwork functions, and how it operates within, and in relation to, its context. Attention is placed on the relationships internal to the artwork, as well as the relations that the artwork produces. What we are interested in is an artworks materiality as it relates to and generates conceptual, speculative, theoretical, imaginative, political and social lines of inquiry." (Text developed by Terri Bird and Bianca Hester)

Due to the project being sited both at Gertrude St and on the web it might be valuable for the feedback for the participants to visit the blog-site before attending the session. Another consideration that needs to be taken into account if you are interested in attending, is choosing the feedback session you most readily identify with. As the internal space is reserved exclusively for those who self-identify with a sexual orientation/inclination other than a heterosexual one. There will an internal feedback session in the gallery for those who identify within the broad and slippery category of queer (lesbian, gay, homo, transgender etc. etc.) and an external feedback (on the street front) for those who don’t.  

The heterosexual* feedback session will be held on Saturday 28th of January at 10:30am and the queer* session on Friday 27th of January also at 10am. It will be great if you could participate in this exercise. It would also be very helpful if you could confirm your attendance via email otherwise I or the facilitator of the session will be calling you soon. If you think there is someone that would enjoy this process don’t hesitate to pass their number/address on to me.

Hope your Summer is going really well,

Best

Spiros Panigirakis

www.with-out.blogspot.com

Letter for Project 4 (Midsumma volunteers)

Dear Midsumma volunteer,

I am an artist who will be exhibiting at Gertrude Contemporary Art Space (200 Gertrude St) in mid January 2006. The gallery is closed during this period and the space has traditionally been used as a window display for the Midsumma festival. As part of the project I am creating a space that will be used exclusively in the reflection of queer thinking within an art practice. The project will transform the space from a window display to a more private space that only queer people will utilise. There will be many activities planned for the space – most having a community of queers collaborating on a craft project. The projects currently proposed for this space are: a celebratory collaborative paper sculpture made by gay and lesbian youth; a reading group and craft response project with queer artists, a poster design workshop for activist queers and a social celebration that incorporates a process based craft activity. I am writing to enquire as to whether you might be able to help out with the later project.

I am developing a project that gives you the opportunity to: meet other Midsumma volunteers over some refreshments; engage and collaborate in the production of contemporary sculpture, be rewarded for the hard work that is required of volunteers and reacquaint yourself with some of those craft skills you might have left behind in your schooling years. All that is required is that you make a commitment to one evening during the festival and arrive at 200 Gertrude St ready to cut, paste, collage and construct while having a good time in a relaxed, safe and fun environment. All materials and equipment will be provided for you and you most definitely don’t need any experience in the visual arts. While all collaborative components of the sculpture belong to the project, individual pieces will belong to the maker and can be acquired at the end of the exhibition period. As the gallery space is blocked off with a curtain to the passing traffic, the only access to the visual results will be via the internet on www.with-out.blogspot.com. Photographs will also be printed for you as a memento of your participation. You might like to have a look at the internet site as the preliminary making and thinking of the project is being documented also. You will be given the opportunity to visit the space again during office hours if you would like to use the space to continue with the craft activity or to engage in the other projects in the space. Your participation in this collaboration will be acknowledged on the blog site.

Due the time frame of the project and the limited spaces available for participants, it is important that you reserve your position by January 12. You can do this by emailing me on spanigirakis@hotmail.com or calling me on 0434553717. It would be appreciated if you could leave a preferred phone number in your message so that I can contact you to confirm your position. The date for this aspect of the project is Monday 23rd of January at 6:30 pm. I look forward to hearing from you and collaborating in this project together. Do not hesitate in giving me a call if you have any queries regarding this project.

Yours sincerely,

Spiros Panigirakis