“If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”
“We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.” ( Camille Paglia, 1990 p16)
“…the hell of chthonian nature that modern humanism denies and represses.” (Camille Paglia) (p17)
“The historical repugnance to woman has a rational basis: disgust is reasons proper response to the grossness of procreative nature. Reason and logic are the anxiety-inspired domain of Apollo, premier god of sky-cult. The Apollonian is harsh and phobic, coldly cutting itself off from nature by its superhuman purity.” (Camille Paglia p17)
“Apollos great opponent Dionysus is ruler of the chthonian whose law is procreative femaleness…Dionysian liquid nature, a miasmic swamp whose prototype is the still pond of the womb.”
Over the weekend I worked more on my film to show at the crit. I added text at the beginning:
Flush-away
Don’t look
Don’t smell
Flush-away
Concrete over the seething, slimy, chaotic, surface…
Pretend we’re not one of the seeping creatures of the real and fruity earth…
And I included a Camille Paglia quote at the beginning.
Working on text for my artists statement and to get my thoughts and ideas in order for the group crit:
I (have created) want to create a vivid, chaotic world where the raw, (bleeding, shitting, birthing) animal woman and her (effluvia) slime are raised up, thrust up, into the censored, phobic, Apollonian realm. A seeping goddess (creature) of the real and fruity earth. The one we try to seal ourselves away from (pretend WE are above), in our de-animalisied, superhuman, flush-away, near-sterile bubbles.
Ideas for greenscreen filming on Monday:
Make a papier-mâché wolf mask. Have Dr wolf with a giant scalpel….make out of ceramics…use him in video performance, running after the animal woman in her bacteria costume, with the scalpel, dark but comedic…never catching her… or just have it in installation and make a cardboard one for the performance? Or too literal…?
The crit went well, I was first when everyone was fresh, which is always better! But it seemed that people got my work without an explanation (it was a silent crit). And although no one laughed at the video, which I had thought they might, Susie Johnston, the PHD student said it powerful, because although it was very playful it was also deeply ecological and melancholic which I was surprised and pleased came across.
I worked more on the armature for my huge squatting woman, with chicken wire and then started adding the newspaper, adding a little each day. I have maybe two layers of newspaper on it now. She has no head shoulders or arms yet, as I haven’t decided what to do about her upper body yet…
I also did some monoprints from a drawing of a simplified figure of a happy looking animal woman taking a shit, with a view to doing some waterless lithography. Then tried out a small acrylic on board painting of a similar character giving birth.
Sketched lots more ideas for objects to make in ceramics over the weekend and wrote down more ideas for a film script/dialogue.
Rachel Bride Ashton 