Reconfiguring pornographic images I cut out the central figures. Now it is the room: the couch, the chair, shadows, the passage of time.
Or is it? With the ‘girl’ removed don’t we ‘see’ her?
Not held in time, she is slippy, verging on the symbolic, gone missing. Meanwhile we remain, conjuring her.
In my imaginary not only time but the structures of patriarchy and the market begin to slip toward change, toward a renewal of our beleaguered planet. I am haunted by this dream.
Not wanting to talk about patriarchy
Not wanting to talk about patriarchy is a plexigram – an exploded porn mise en scene referencing John Cage’s seminal work Not wanting to talk about Marcel, a series of plexigrams which were a memorial to artist Marcel Duchamp. Cage created a structure and then used chance operations to place letters, words and images on perspex sheets. Removing his artist’s hand he creates a tabula rasa for the viewer. Viewed in different ways the work is completed in the mind of the viewer who is essential to the process.
Similarly in my work blanks, juxtaposition and overlapping on the perspex enables them to be read in multiple combinations. Individual sheets can be moved to show different sequences.
Cage used a process of random decision making to choose elements and positioning to eliminate ‘bias’ from his work. However I have sourced these images from the market place. I include a hand drawn graph, an analogue imprint of a photoshop grid (complete with errors) to show my artist’s hand, a symbol of my bias, my culpability.
Though the women are disappeared from this work, our imagination continues to search for them.