youbeseeoh ( u b c o ) em eff eh ( m f a ) m a y ( 2 0 1 2 )

writings on kiss kiss bang bang aftermath a show by shannon lester (sasha zamolodchikova) and michael judd (belgium solanas) an interview with the artist behind tippy-toe, tippy-toe, i know where she go a show by julia prudhomme two mfa exhibitions at the ubco fina gallery. summer 2012 a document by lucas glenn

KISSING KISSING BANGING BANGING

kiss kiss bang bang aftermath: gender, gentility, and the generally macabre

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is an arts collective comprised of Shannon Lester, Micheal Judd, Linda Malick, and Aaron Peterson. They specialize in dark/morbid presentation and, whether you call it gender confusion or gender conviction, drag. Sasha Zamolodchikova and Belgium Solanas, the female counterparts of Lester and Judd, were the main course that evening. - kiss kiss bang bang: aftermath may fourth fina gallery you bee see oh kelowna bc

- whummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm A deep bassline sound signaled us viewer-participant-type-people into the gallery space. Blood red liquid, pooled onto the floor, called attention to most eyes. Two six foot something women (men) dressed in dress and made up in make up kneeled on the floor. For the next hour they soaked up the red with cloths, towels, and lingerie. The gag reflex in my brain stretched a little as Belgium and Sasha wrung out the fabrics

into an industrial bucket. The music flowed through the space with mixtures of old time big band sounds and confusing ambiance and bassey overtone undertones. I had no idea so little lace could soak up so much blood. The odor of corn syrup and chocolate filled the room as would an inflatable bouncy castle. It wasnt a bad smell, in fact, it was a good smell, but holy hell was it ever strong. Strong as though mothers baking was invading the audiences nostrils. The swing music stopped in intervals, whummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, and each time things stood still a little bit. Mostly because

Sasha and Belgium stood still a little bit, posing, and facing each other decorated like sexy x-mas trees. They alternated between posing and kneeling, occasionally adjusting their drag, until an hour had passed.

The pair entered the gallery with the main course. With graceful gestures they dropped raw meat onto four plates set on a table. They pulled up two chairs at opposite ends of a dinner table and began readjusting their cutlery, wine glasses, and bowls. Their focus on presentation continued ringing interpretive bells in my head as they tugged at the corners of their napkins. They then stopped, and stared into each others eyes, for several minutes. In the name of the father, the spirit, and the holy ghost they touched four corners of their torsos and stood up. Reaching to the center of the table, Sasha and Belgium unwrapped doily-like packaging to reveal a dead fish, a prop that very few audience members had noticed beforehand.

The final segment of show started with a kiss of pop music, rhythmically tied together with deep bass tones, a slew of ragtime upswing tunes, and dirtythirty frenchtown jingles. Belgiums heels tapped as she took a step onto the hollowed stage. Hand in hand, Sasha stepped up too. Hup two. Their routine commenced with a melodious mixture of burlesque and modest dance moves. As they shuffled and stepped across the small stage, the warm hollow sounds of echoes echoed echoes echoed across the gallery walls. The black platform was modestly sized, and one could see the performers adapting. The lipdub began and the two dancers moved around one another, their mouths renditioning catchy pop songs sang by catchy pop singers. Sasha and Belgiums lips puckered and pursed lyrically, and in an oddly stern fashion. The stern gazes matched with the loose and upbeat music made for an uncomfortable type of comfort. Seriousness is not often a pop-related attitude. It appeared as though my mind thought too soon, as Sasha brought out the dead fish once again. An established artist once told to me that artists are the greatest problem solvers. What she said made sense to me, because an artist either has to make so much of so little, or so little of so much. So much movement happened in such little space. Like an underwater ballet in a fishbowl. Time and time again I watched heels touch the stage just inches from the edge. Were the other viewers and I not standing, I would have been on the edge of my seat. Maybe I read too far into the steps. But what I read was artists with big ideas, on a small Okanagan stage, a stage that was in every way strong and supportive, but by no means big.

an interview w ith Julia Prudh omme about her exhibition

Tippy -toe ,
I know where she g o
lucas julia

Tip pytoe ,

lucas

Tippytoe tippytoe?
lucas

julia

O. K.

Why grayscale?

julia

Tippy-toe, tippy-toe, I know where she go, is a poem I wrote. As artists we keep having to explain ourselves, as Im sure you have, in things like artist statements. I was getting bored of writing Julia Prudhomme is an interdisciplinary artist and MFA student at UBCO, so I went on a riff and wrote Tippy-toe tippy-toe, I know where she go. Its about these little people that come in and dont know where they are or where theyre from. Theyve just appeared out of the ether, and then theyre gone. I collect the little remnants that they leave behind. So I suppose those are the characters in the mugshots. Theres a bit of a connection there. Tippy-toe. I used to be a ballerina. I really just like the sound of tippy-toe, too: the wording of it, and the rhythm that it makes. Its really silly. I wanted it to be something that was not directly derivative of the show. You have to make the connection yourself. Theres a great artist named Loots Backchairlucas

The presentation of your show even seen in the name comes across as really cute and innocent, but when youre inside the gallery, it comes across as strong and more mature, almost austere. Maybe its the seriousness of your gaze in your self portraits but why did you distinguish such contrast between cuddly and stern?
julia

Mail-order opium

lucas

Pattern significance?

julia

Say again?

julia

Lutz Bacher, I hope Im pronouncing it right. She had a recent show in San Francisco. I found her the other day and I love her stuff. She does her artist statements as butterscotch pudding recipes. So things like that inspire me. If youre interested you should go check her out.
lucas

I suppose pattern shows up in the fabrics I use as well as the images. Patterns in fabrics are of course repetitive but they have this strange sort of way of glossing over things. Ive been reading a lot about how people have these patterns in their everyday sortof pattern life and it seems futile but they do it because it makes the chaos seem more orderly. So ill automatically see a coconut pattern or a floral pattern as repetitive but it seems really fake because its this man-made design going over and over again. Its also really aesthetically interesting to look at something with such consistent repetition. and it certainly plays with your last question, about the cuddly and sterness in that it breaks the two down a little bit.
lucas

I was playing around with the photos themselves and they originate from 1900s mugshots of women. Theyre more associated with wanted posters, like male cowboys. I fell in love with these photos when I found them. Though the original photos are obviously black and white film, not digital, there was a different quality that way which I wanted to recreate. With the digital I was able to take portraits of myself and manipulate them in a ways that change the way that people look at them. The scrappiness of the application of material on my face and the way that I wear it is really playful, like a little kid playing in a treasure box, tickle trunk sort of thing. Black and white gives the photos an air of beautification, that you wouldnt normally get in color. I also find that you read into color more. I do any ways I dont know about you.
lucas

No absolutely

I have a really romantic association to black and white. It implies dreaminess to me. I wanted it to be sort of dreamy. Real but not real. There but not there.
lucas

Is any aspect of your public records series diaristic in nature, and if so could it be considered a form of documentation?
julia

Would you consider each double portrait as a diptych or do they function better when seen as a whole- as the same photograph?
julia

The package.

I will

lucas

Personal significance?

Definitely, yes

julia

Rambling time? Of course

tippy-toe, tippy-toe, i know where she go with the still beating heart of civilization in her hand that smells the sweet taste of manure from strawberry traffic jams and shadows that have fainted continually born backwards from whirling soup the clocks on the walls all meow noon

lucas

julia

I was going through this etiquette phase where I was just doing things according to the passive polite quiet woman and I got really sick of it almost. I wanted to investigate the other shades of women that are documented in photographic remains. I find the mugshot fascinating because much of the time the models look sort of sinister or happy. You dont really even need to know what their crime is, but theres this break between the actual act and the proceeding mugshot. Its this really fleeting remain of what has happened and how they might be seen. It may not show who they exactly are but I think it chronicles how they are categorized. Their fixed box, their portrait almost a s-[tape cuts out] person. And the characters themselves certainly have their own standing in my

own self. Not that I would necessarily explain which one is which specific character, but I think the doubling of the photos is important to me because I find the psychology and the idea of a twin really strange. Like this person who talks back to you -I sound crazy I know- but the twin is interesting to look into because its this person that youll ask, how are you today, and it will say, youre doing good. It reassures you that these things are okay. Like having a sister. Someone thats shares similarities with you.
lucas

But personally?

julia

Im actually a twin. I have a twin brother. So I think this twinning thing has kindof shown up indiscreetly through this project. Not that I necessarily want the works to be about that. And I like to dress up. Who doesnt. Well maybe there are people tha- scratch that, some people dont like to. I approach

dressing up like, say youre listening to a song in the morning Cry To Me by Solomon Burke in the morning and I get into that 60s mood and thats where my head is. So thats how I dress and/or go about the day. Similar to the characters- but Im not going to walk around with fabric on my face.
lucas

julia

Name as many of your influences as you possibly can

julia

Fruit Loops

ucas

Index cards?

julia

Recipes. Actually the index cards came after the work. I was playing around with things I could use in the gallery. Index cards have a nice aesthetic. I used one of them as an anchoring or an explanation of the works if people wanted to read about them. Theyre still quite fragmented but I used them to write down the Tippy-toe poem, that the title originated from. And on one card I included a quote by Anais Nin. I was reading her diaries and I found one quote that was perfect for the show. It went with the doubling, and the twin that I talked about before. The cards have a nostalgic feel too. I even contemplated throwing some flour on them and making them dirty, but they arent that important in the grand scheme of things so I decided not to. It was really just for people wanting to know what was going on. In my own childhood we had this huge collection of recipe cards that were absolutely destroyed from cooking around them. My grandma would handwrite them out and they would say things like Grandma Holdens Shortbread Cookies All The Way From Scotland. I was interested in reading into things like that.
lucas

Im a thrift store junkie, so one of the days that I was installing I came across this little TV and it worked fantastically. It had a perfect antenna and it was really small. It completed this little picnic sort of scene that I was building in my brain. I wanted to invite people to sit if they were compelled to, so I bought and laid out turf. In the least people could walk on a little shift of ground change. The video, projected beyond the small TV, is in three segments. I originally wanted to have them side by side but it worked out better having one projection of the segments, expanding across the whole wall. If you were to sit on the turf, it would be almost overwhelming. The first segment is of my mouth with lace around it and Im eating rose petals. It ends with me spitting out a whole rose. The second segment is my hand wearing those lace gloves, that you remember me wearing at the last show, pouring out cartons of milk. The third is a shot of my feet stomping on eggs. I wanted to give everything a kind of hazy coloring, with an eighties romance movie feel to it. I wanted them saturated, especially the red and the green. Whatever other elements that came into it would stand out too. And theyre super fragmented, like the title, The Ballad of the Goodly Mere. Its so much like a poem. Mere has so many translations, and in french it means mother. So each one of the segments is important to me as a female. The milk. The eggs. I suppose thats blatant but I also associate the flower with cooking flour. Something domestic, like baking cookies. And then the balloons! I love balloons. Originally they were helium balloons. The shuttlecocks were anchoring them down and to the side, when they were afloat. The thing is that in that space you have to close the door at night, and the air gets super hot in there, so the balloons all died. The next day i came in and they were on the ground.
lucas

The aesthetic?

julia

The cards aesthetic is quite beautiful with that pink line on the top. Its just got this really nice tactile quality where you just want to pick it up with your hands, unlike flipping through a document that was printed out on a computer. Youre looking at something that someone has genuinely handwritten.
lucas

Do you have anything to say about the ephemerality of the helium balloons first being anchored down by the shuttlecocks, and then eventually being held up by them?
julia

Oompa Loompa White noise?

lucas

You call your piece, the ballad of the goodly mere, a visual poem. Will you be exploring the genre more or will it be exclusive to this installation?
julia

julia

Ezra Pound

lucas

Ready mades?

Having the TV in the show was important because I wanted to fill the gallery with white noise. You know theres that horribly noisy vent in the gallery? Well it threw me off! I became very conscious of that fan when I was installing. I wanted something to kind of yell back at it. Like, Were here, theres something else here and youre not going to take

over the space!. I found a little bit of poetic sadness in the TV. It tries so hard to make a connection but it cant do it any more, it just receives static. So in juxtaposing that with the really large projection of the visual poem (if you want to call it that) I saw it as adding different levels of scale.
lucas

one focus of yours is the presentation of young women in todays society. would you say this is more a pop cultural theme or more a feminist theme for you and your work?
julia

Mystery Girl

lucas

closing remarks?

julia

I had a lot of fun making it. I hope the show gave people a feel of who I am and what I like to do, especially since this is one of the first shows I put together in the space. It being in the university is nice too. I dont think many people get to see the MFAs. Were kindof the ghosts of the university. Like the man behind the curtain in the wizard of oz. So i hope people got a feel of what i get obsessed with and what I make of it. Im just happy people look at it, let alone show interest. I like to make little areas, and shape the experience so much that people can inject themselves into it.

- tippy toe, tippy toe, i know where she go may seventh to twentieth fina gallery you be see oh kelowna bc