Bits of Both

I recently had another feedback discussion regarding my further experiments in creating ambiguously gendered beings. One comment was along the lines that the bodies are still binary. My immediate response was that I didn’t agree because they contained both elements in one. On reflection, I’m not sure that is true or even if it were, if the bodies are still what I want them to be. On the one hand it is possible to argue that female breasts and a vulva on a male frame with a male head represents a being that is not either male or female, and therefore is not binary as it is not reducible to either/or, one or the other. On the other hand, the feedback did make me question if there was another way to approach my collaged bodies; could I further obfuscate gender labels by mixing the gendered body parts within a single body?

This thought process led me to the experiments you see here, a male body with a male chest but a vulva instead of a penis, and a female body with a female chest but also a penis. I will no doubt need some time to reflect further on which of the variations I most prefer: 1. A female head on a male body and vice versa. 2. A male head and body with female breasts and vulva and vice versa. 3. A female body with female breasts but also a penis and vice versa. Perhaps ultimately the solution might even be to have all three options feature in the final series of images. As the bi-gendered bodies are only intended to represent a psyche that is not either/or, not binary in nature, then in theory each of the three modes could be justified and effective.

In any case, all of the odd bodies that I have been experimenting with very much bring to mind the concepts of The Weird and the Eerie that Mark Fisher explores in his book of the same title. Perhaps not surprisingly, Fisher starts by distinguishing between the weird and the eerie and Freud’s notion of the unheimlich, or more commonly in English, the uncanny (but most accurately translated as un-homely). Essentially Fisher summarises a definition of the unheimlich as that which is recognisable but also strange and that this mode of experience assumes a position of interpreting the outside world from within. In contrast, Fisher then goes on to say “The weird and the eerie make the opposite move: they allow us to see the inside from the perspective of the outside …the weird is that which does not belong.”

Fisher develops his thoughts further by exploring the grotesque as a dimension of the weird “Like the weird, the grotesque evokes something which is out of place. The response to the apparition of a grotesque object will involve laughter as much as revulsion,” (my italics). One of the cultural products Fisher refers to is the 1980 album Grotesque (After the Gramme) by influential, Mancunian post-punk band The Fall. With lyrics that reference James Joyce and conjure lurid and bizarre collages of mental images, Fisher situates the album within the modernist school of art but also points to the biting satire which grounds it in the form of the grotesque. “This is satire… in which invective becomes delirial, a (pyscho)tropological spewing of associations and animosities, the true object of which is not any failing of probity but the delusion that human dignity is possible.”

Reading this analysis of the grotesque and Grotesque, I could not help but consider the work I was making with it’s weird, grotesque bodies and the references to the human condition. If the satire of the Fall targets the hubris of humanity, critiquing the pride that comes before the fall, then I feel an affinity in my desire to challenge the status-quo of gender norms. While truths of biological difference are incontrovertible, gender is a social and cultural, conceptual construct with which we tie ourselves in knots while striving to determine human identities and relations of power. Fisher reflects this beautifully for me when beginning to conclude his analysis of the grotesque and Grotesque: “We could go as far as to say that it is the human condition to be grotesque, since the human animal is the one that does not fit in, the freak of nature who has no place in the natural order and is capable of re-combining nature’s product’s into hideous new forms”.

On the surface and visually, it might seem that it is my weird, out of place beings that are grotesque in their contradiction to our received wisdom of binary gender, but in fact, what I want them to point to, is that it is actually the notion of gender as binary, polarised opposites that is the grotesque apparition we should be seeking to unmask and undermine.