X is Y
Works featured in X is Y seek to address contemporary questions surrounding
identity politics and value attribution. It takes its title from the Richard Kern 1990
short film (recently shown at Sandy Brown as part of Cave Kino).The film is part of
1980s New York's Cinema of Transgression, whose manifesto proposes "that all film
schools be blown up and all boring films never be made again” and “that any film
which doesn’t shock isn’t worth looking at”.
In Kern’s X is Y, topless cuties flail wildly, cradle phallic assault rifles, drape
themselves over pinstriped sofas and spin around beneath hooded eyes in a display
of ‘radical femininity’ that is neither particularly interesting nor shocking. Was it
once? And is it any more or less engaging than the contemporary brand of casually
eroticised violence that sells over a 100 million books in over 50 languages and
makes over 266 million dollars over it’s opening weekend at the global box office?
Susanne Pfeffer has said she finds it interesting and strange that Kern is attacked by
feminists, "because women appear as the main protagonists" within Cinema of
Transgression and across his work. Regardless of gendered privileges or gaze
relations (Laura Mulvey, John Berger), shouldn't a true protagonist mold her own
identity?
How closely is gender tied to identity anyway? How about Tiqqun’s genderless
vision-machines? The attention economy? Where is the safe word to distinguish
between fantasy, construct and abuse of the two?
We haven't always held complete agency over our own bodies, or image, our
behaviours or identities (we still don’t btw) so what does Kern’s X is Y present? Are
we watching a charged confrontation with female eroticism or a hetero dude with a
Kenneth Anger fetish and a cheap camera exploiting a systemic power dynamic?
How can we ignore revelations that abuse of power comes as no surprise? 2015’s
Christian Grey stands alongside Bill Cosby, Terry Richardson, Dov Charney, Gary
Glitter and the kidnapping of over 270 Chibok schoolgirls. Tell us again how women
are free.
A mop, a selfie, white goods, a diss, #heelconcept, an attitude, hairclips, pastels,
sentiment.
In X is Y, selected artists both wield and oppose the codes of prescribed femininity
with work that navigates the tension between possible roles as consumer, daughter,
artist, meat sack, thought vortex, sexual being, mother, political vessel, projection,
product, vulnerable mortal or Other.
Any girl who's strong and very dedicated to what they do and don't take no mess,
they can be a part of La Bella Mafia.
Text by Ella Plevin