Statement: The Feminism? Project,
Amber Doll, Tilikum, FIt
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Amber Doll, Tilikum, FIt
To download a PDF containing
this Statement click Packet Download (PDF)
or the Packet Download (PDF) tab above.
The Feminism? Project
Since my series, "The Feminism? Project" I have positioned my performative work at the interplay between repulsion, desire, and surrender. "The Feminism? Project" (2006) compiles ten video reenactments scripted from interviews on the topic of feminism with women across my homestate of Iowa. Their responses range from naïve surprise to composed discourse and become flip one-liners and ironic ramblings delivered in my valley-girl intonation and enacted in provocatively sexual contexts.
The Amber Doll Project
After completing the project—lonely and seeking the companionship of a girlfriend but not yet out as queer—I discovered an online forum maintained by a community of primarily hetero-outsider men who own life-like sex dolls, RealDolls, made of a PVC skeleton and silicone flesh and penetrable in three ribbed orifices. Aware of my own failed attempts at dating real women (termed “organics” on the forum), I felt an affinity with a subgroup of the community who described themselves as “doll husbands,” and considered themselves partnered with their RealDolls. Inspired by the fulfillment they found in their relationships with what they termed “synthetics” over “organics,” I ordered a RealDoll of my own. I acquired Amber Doll, herself a literal object, as a prop for my work and academic interests but also to become the companion I desired in my personal life. After completing, "The Making-Of Amber Doll" and "Las Vegas Wedding Ceremony" (both 2007) I planned performances that questioned the success or failure of negotiating power through my own participation in a cultural narrative that declares women as objects.
I abandoned Amber Doll in a wedding reception, a roller-skating rink, a football tailgating party, a theme park, and an adult industry convention where the impulses of curiosity, hostility, and self-assessment were magnified. I allowed strangers to explore her materiality and sexual availability—often violently—without stepping in. The possibility of peril combined with my lack of intervention pushed the limits of the social codes of each space.
Impossible to keep my personal relationship with my doll separate from my interest in using her as a prop, “The Amber Doll Project” became a lived-performance with two categories of output: 1.) the raw snapshots, video diaries, and correspondence that documented our falling into and out of love alongside the growing difference in our bodies as I gained weight and she remained the same. And 2.) our collaborative conceptual photographs, video vignettes, and interactive installations questioning agency and objectification.
The ultimate object of desire and repulsion, Amber Doll showed physical signs of the abuse she endured by the time our collaborative conceptual work culminated in our solo exhibition “To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll” at Locust Projects, Miami (2008). With torn silicone and broken joints I laid her out in a surveiled casket as part of a funerary installation surrounded by fresh flowers. The live-feed surveillance footage was viewable on a monitor on the other side of a wall that separated the visitors interacting with Amber Doll from visitors monitoring their actions. One of the most overtly aggressive acts I witnessed against Amber Doll happened during the opening night of the exhibition when a young man wound up and forcefully punched her in her face tearing both corners of her mouth as I watched on the other side of the wall through the monitor. By the exhibition’s end Amber Doll’s nose had been cut off and the tears in her face had grown deeper. Further damage to her face and body occurred after the exhibition during shipping leaving her nearly destroyed.
Sex dolls and online communities such as the doll forum where I met the doll husbands are examples of simulations that are commonly thought of as substitutions for real things. The multiple meanings to be made of such cultural products and activities, however, far exceed what is often interpreted as their surrogate uses. By finding companionship with the community of doll husbands and experiencing romantic expectations (and eventual disillusionment) with an inanimate object, I embrace other meanings and uses for substitutes and acknowledge their value.
Tilikum
To further explore ideas surrounding the substitute, my forthcoming work with Amber Doll involves transforming her severely damaged silicone flesh, PVC skeleton, and steel-infused joints into a to-scale replica of the bull orca, Tilikum, who lives in captivity at SeaWorld Orlando and has been involved in the deaths of three people. Tilikum recently made headlines after a February 24, 2010 incident when he killed Dawn Brancheau, a 40-year-old trainer with sixteen years of experience at SeaWorld. The trainer was drowned following a popular “Dine with Shamu” show while twenty tourists looked on from above a whale tank and from an underwater viewing area.
I will conduct the Amber Doll / Tilikum transformation in my studio under instruction from a “doll doctor.” My doll’s skeleton will become Tilikum’s skeleton and her mouth, tongue, and labia will become his very large mouth and tongue. Other of Amber Doll’s parts will be used as non-equivalent parts of Tilikum resulting in an assemblage maintaining a reference to its materials. Her silicone breasts for example, will become his characteristically large dorsal fin. The replica will be painted to mimic Tilikum’s markings.
The rebirth of Amber Doll into a replica of a mammal that is easy to sympathize with as a captive yet easy to blame as a violent killer references the love/hate tension in my doll’s and my existing relationship. The continued cultural domination of images of the subjection of women along with images of women gaining power by participating in their own subjection requires a feminist dialogue. My work involving Amber Doll’s destroyed body modified into a replica of a captive killer whale unflinchingly addresses the necessary dialogue through a complicated feminist lens.
Fit
Simultaneous to my work transforming Amber Doll into Tilikum I am currently working on “Fit” a series of durational performative videos. "Fit" involves regularly digging chest-deep holes for time inspired by fitness methodology and cult-like online community, CrossFit. Along with my community at CrossFit South Brooklyn, I enjoy combining powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, sprinting, and gymnastics along with functional fitness activities. My interest in CrossFit, along with the long list of the functional fitness tasks my grandfather assigned my father beginning when he turned age eight, has led me to assigning myself the weekly digging of chest-deep holes for time. I have completed over a dozen holes in a variety of locations ranging from the beach (digging in wet sand) to abandoned city lots (digging in hard clay with concrete chunks). As my CrossFit training and hole-digging further improves my strength I will tackle other of the long list of functional fitness tasks that my grandfather assigned my father beginning at age eight. I am currently working toward fireman carry sprints. As a variation on the assignment I will conduct my sprints with queer women who identify as butch.
Since my series, "The Feminism? Project" I have positioned my performative work at the interplay between repulsion, desire, and surrender. "The Feminism? Project" (2006) compiles ten video reenactments scripted from interviews on the topic of feminism with women across my homestate of Iowa. Their responses range from naïve surprise to composed discourse and become flip one-liners and ironic ramblings delivered in my valley-girl intonation and enacted in provocatively sexual contexts.
The Amber Doll Project
After completing the project—lonely and seeking the companionship of a girlfriend but not yet out as queer—I discovered an online forum maintained by a community of primarily hetero-outsider men who own life-like sex dolls, RealDolls, made of a PVC skeleton and silicone flesh and penetrable in three ribbed orifices. Aware of my own failed attempts at dating real women (termed “organics” on the forum), I felt an affinity with a subgroup of the community who described themselves as “doll husbands,” and considered themselves partnered with their RealDolls. Inspired by the fulfillment they found in their relationships with what they termed “synthetics” over “organics,” I ordered a RealDoll of my own. I acquired Amber Doll, herself a literal object, as a prop for my work and academic interests but also to become the companion I desired in my personal life. After completing, "The Making-Of Amber Doll" and "Las Vegas Wedding Ceremony" (both 2007) I planned performances that questioned the success or failure of negotiating power through my own participation in a cultural narrative that declares women as objects.
I abandoned Amber Doll in a wedding reception, a roller-skating rink, a football tailgating party, a theme park, and an adult industry convention where the impulses of curiosity, hostility, and self-assessment were magnified. I allowed strangers to explore her materiality and sexual availability—often violently—without stepping in. The possibility of peril combined with my lack of intervention pushed the limits of the social codes of each space.
Impossible to keep my personal relationship with my doll separate from my interest in using her as a prop, “The Amber Doll Project” became a lived-performance with two categories of output: 1.) the raw snapshots, video diaries, and correspondence that documented our falling into and out of love alongside the growing difference in our bodies as I gained weight and she remained the same. And 2.) our collaborative conceptual photographs, video vignettes, and interactive installations questioning agency and objectification.
The ultimate object of desire and repulsion, Amber Doll showed physical signs of the abuse she endured by the time our collaborative conceptual work culminated in our solo exhibition “To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll” at Locust Projects, Miami (2008). With torn silicone and broken joints I laid her out in a surveiled casket as part of a funerary installation surrounded by fresh flowers. The live-feed surveillance footage was viewable on a monitor on the other side of a wall that separated the visitors interacting with Amber Doll from visitors monitoring their actions. One of the most overtly aggressive acts I witnessed against Amber Doll happened during the opening night of the exhibition when a young man wound up and forcefully punched her in her face tearing both corners of her mouth as I watched on the other side of the wall through the monitor. By the exhibition’s end Amber Doll’s nose had been cut off and the tears in her face had grown deeper. Further damage to her face and body occurred after the exhibition during shipping leaving her nearly destroyed.
Sex dolls and online communities such as the doll forum where I met the doll husbands are examples of simulations that are commonly thought of as substitutions for real things. The multiple meanings to be made of such cultural products and activities, however, far exceed what is often interpreted as their surrogate uses. By finding companionship with the community of doll husbands and experiencing romantic expectations (and eventual disillusionment) with an inanimate object, I embrace other meanings and uses for substitutes and acknowledge their value.
Tilikum
To further explore ideas surrounding the substitute, my forthcoming work with Amber Doll involves transforming her severely damaged silicone flesh, PVC skeleton, and steel-infused joints into a to-scale replica of the bull orca, Tilikum, who lives in captivity at SeaWorld Orlando and has been involved in the deaths of three people. Tilikum recently made headlines after a February 24, 2010 incident when he killed Dawn Brancheau, a 40-year-old trainer with sixteen years of experience at SeaWorld. The trainer was drowned following a popular “Dine with Shamu” show while twenty tourists looked on from above a whale tank and from an underwater viewing area.
I will conduct the Amber Doll / Tilikum transformation in my studio under instruction from a “doll doctor.” My doll’s skeleton will become Tilikum’s skeleton and her mouth, tongue, and labia will become his very large mouth and tongue. Other of Amber Doll’s parts will be used as non-equivalent parts of Tilikum resulting in an assemblage maintaining a reference to its materials. Her silicone breasts for example, will become his characteristically large dorsal fin. The replica will be painted to mimic Tilikum’s markings.
The rebirth of Amber Doll into a replica of a mammal that is easy to sympathize with as a captive yet easy to blame as a violent killer references the love/hate tension in my doll’s and my existing relationship. The continued cultural domination of images of the subjection of women along with images of women gaining power by participating in their own subjection requires a feminist dialogue. My work involving Amber Doll’s destroyed body modified into a replica of a captive killer whale unflinchingly addresses the necessary dialogue through a complicated feminist lens.
Fit
Simultaneous to my work transforming Amber Doll into Tilikum I am currently working on “Fit” a series of durational performative videos. "Fit" involves regularly digging chest-deep holes for time inspired by fitness methodology and cult-like online community, CrossFit. Along with my community at CrossFit South Brooklyn, I enjoy combining powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, sprinting, and gymnastics along with functional fitness activities. My interest in CrossFit, along with the long list of the functional fitness tasks my grandfather assigned my father beginning when he turned age eight, has led me to assigning myself the weekly digging of chest-deep holes for time. I have completed over a dozen holes in a variety of locations ranging from the beach (digging in wet sand) to abandoned city lots (digging in hard clay with concrete chunks). As my CrossFit training and hole-digging further improves my strength I will tackle other of the long list of functional fitness tasks that my grandfather assigned my father beginning at age eight. I am currently working toward fireman carry sprints. As a variation on the assignment I will conduct my sprints with queer women who identify as butch.
