Contemporary artists on why it’s nice to be naughty
As cultural commentators artists are often on the front lines of debate on political social historical and ethical issues. Fast Forward interviewed four contemporary artists who deal with the provocative collision between art and sexuality about their DIY work ethic and what it means to push boundaries.
INTRODUCING MR. AND MRS. KEITH MURRAY
Calgary-born artist Keith Murray is no stranger to controversy. The artist is an outspoken advocate and poster-queer for freedom of artistic expression in Alberta. “If an artist puts positive images of sexuality out into the world people are bound to be challenged by it and jump to conclusions about subversive sexual behaviour” he says. What’s subversive to one person might be completely commonplace to another especially concerning the stereotypes about queer sex he says. Add a healthy dose of growing up Catholic into the mix and things can get volatile.
Murray’s performative video art almost always features himself with elaborate sets costumes and drag makeup. He’s shaved his crotch hair into a crucifix objectified the image of the cowboy with a gay gaze and in one particularly infamous unholy gesture captured on video for eternity pulled rosary beads out of his ass saying a Hail Mary for each one. “The correlation between rosary beads and anal beads was just too brilliant” he says playfully. He insists these radical gestures are not meant to provoke controversy alone but instead they’re intended to ask questions about spirituality dogma self-acceptance and love. “I want to achieve a world that allows for something beyond tolerance of difference and is about acceptance and radical all-embracing love. I believe in love!”
In his short video Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.) Murray used split-screen video editing tricks and elaborate drag to stage a jerk-off date between the masculine and feminine sides of his self. The work is not literally about masturbation he says but instead uses it as a metaphor for narcissism and self-reflection in art life and spirituality. The gesture of self-love and inward focus caused a chain reaction (he calls this video his “first date” with himself) that culminated in his recent self-marriage performance for Las Vegas’s Erotic Heritage Museum. “Everyone has a female and male side and we instinctively know that finding balance will bring us a sense of peace” he says.
For Lady in the Tramp Murray collaborated with two other artists to create a campy black-and-white comedy in the style of a silent movie. Set in The Beaulieu Gardens on the grounds of Calgary’s historic Lougheed House the block is the epicentre of what Murray calls the fruit loop. “It’s a place where gay men go to cruise for sex and the area is so gorgeous and it was a fantasy of mine to project a queer-ified version of history into that space.” The plink-plink of vaudeville music sets a fast pace for the romance between a tall lanky drag queen and a scruffy mustachioed fagette. It culminates with the fagette fucking the queen with the enthusiasm of a bucking-bronco. Creating a sexually charged narrative in a public space was about taking the liberty to create a queer history for the city he’s lived in all his life. “There is virtually no documentation of queer sexual history in Calgary and I wanted to explore these possible stories” he says. A solo exhibition of his work titled The Neon God We Made opens at TRUCK this April. Prepare for hundreds of glow-in-the-dark religious icons including specialty “baby Jesus butt plugs” and new video work on two of Murray’s favourite topics: queer sexuality and radical spirituality.
NEON FETISH PORN WITH GODDESS STARLA SPARKLEFOX
“People would be very surprised to know how many thousands of others are out there” says self-made indie pornographer and dominatrix Goddess Starla Sparklefox aka Carla Coma. She’s referring to those who derive sexual pleasure from what she calls “micro-niche” erotica — everything from porn that looks like campy horror B movies websites featuring girls pouring green slime on themselves and videos of people who get wildly lusty while popping balloons. When she says “it’s very very interesting work” her tone is matter-of-fact. “Given what I do is still fairly taboo I find it so important to emphasize that what I do is consensual” she says. She talks about maintaining a strong sense of ethics empowerment and awareness for herself and the people she works with.
The Goddess (as she is addressed by her 24-7 love slave and husband as well as the other submissives who serve her) comes by her love of acting in performative pornography honestly if not a tad circuitously. She trained at the Alberta College of Art and Design in drawing animation and performance. There she developed an esthetic steeped in surrealism indie crafting and over-the-top kitsch. Through experimentation with various performative art forms she gradually challenged her introversion and fear of public speaking. “I didn’t want to just make strange art I wanted to make sure that I lived a life that was both strange and fascinating” she says. The resulting fusion between her artistic style and life in the world of BDSM is unlike anything else.
Coma is an avid thrifter and collector and incorporates the hoards of toys stuffed animals and retro textiles that she calls her “rainbow-coloured junk collection” into animation installation and set design. Her National Film Board production The Squirrel Next Door is an interspecies love story between a squirrel and a spider shot using stop-motion animation and gloriously crafty set dressings. “As an individual artist I would work on all phases of production and I translated this experience back to producing my own porn” she says. As she discovered the fetish world she found opportunities to act and produce her own pornography for the growing market of independent and DIY porn.
The self-professed “crafting geek” is also developing an online store through the popular indie craft site Etsy.com. Her colour palate of hot pinks acid greens and bright patterns straight out of the ’80s is highly unusual compared with the black leather PVC and steel that appears in more ubiquitous fetish pornography. Still it’s hard to say if a domestic pornographic scene of Goddess Starla and her slave presided over by a bunch of pink Care Bears is any more or less kinky.
“I have to admit that I do enjoy how campy or over-the-top role-playing antics can be” she says laughing. Live webcams can be “an insane experience on the cusp of show business. I don’t necessarily want the attention and I do get a bit embarrassed.” Still Starla is most satisfied by her “love for the creative process that goes into making porn.”
CELEBRITY LEZBIAN FIST IS FUN FOR ALL
If pop culture tells us that lesbian sex is all about light petting then P.G. Thing Co.’s Celebrity Lezbian Fist project is a defiant wake-up call to those who’ve been duped. “In my own experience lesbian sex was really about pushing the boundaries of physicality. That was exciting and powerful” says Paige Gratland the Toronto-based artist behind the project.
Celebrity Lezbian Fist is a limited edition series of silicone fists cast from the actual hands of famous lesbian cultural icons. A friend who worked at Toronto’s feminist sex toy store Come As You Are connected Gratland with the Ontario-based high-quality sex toy producers at Happy Valley. “I asked advice [about how to make silicone sex toys] and in the conversation it was apparent that we should collaborate” she says. Happy Valley’s emphasis on safe medical-grade silicone design reflected the way she wants to live and work. It was important for the objects to have “artistic integrity” and be ready for use as sex toys.
For the project Gratland has brushed knuckles with some amazing people including musician JD Samson of Le Tigre multidisciplinary punk rocker GB Jones Canadian performance artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan American photographer Cathy Opie cultural theorist Jack Halberstam and boxing coach and lesbian community leader Savoy “Kapow” Howe.
Even for those who are unfamiliar with the thrill of fisting the casts are intimate portraits of each person. A symbol of political defiance labour and queer sex the series is about acknowledging people who have built the queer community through their cultural production. “Hands are a currency for lesbians they are what we cruise they end up being our member” she says. “Our hands are what we work with if we are writers or artists or boxers or builders so our fucking happens with our hands and our cultural reproduction happens with our hands.”
When she started doing this project interest in the cultural history of fisting and leather culture led Gratland to read American cultural theorist Gayle Rubin. Rubin who founded the first known lesbian S&M group has also produced an incredible archive of writing and scholarship about sex feminism and queer history and will become the next Celebrity Lezbian Fist in the series.
When a girlfriend spoke about how Annie Sprinkle’s life as a pornstar sex worker feminist theorist sexual health activist and performance artist was a symbol of powerful sexuality in her life Gratland also became interested in Sprinkle’s legacy as an artist and activist. “This project is tapping into a history of women who have worked as cultural producers. I am creating my own mythology — they have been major figures and they have become my archetypes.” Fans of Annie Sprinkle Alison Bechdel who wrote Dykes to Watch Out For and Joan Jett have petitioned Gratland to cast their fists for the collection.
FLAGGING FOR FUN AND ART
“Art about the body is not necessarily smutty or sexy. It may refer to sex but also has a more complex reading” says Onya Hogan Finlay a Montreal-based artist about her collaborative work. Hogan-Finlay is a contributor within the artist-collective The Third Leg an ongoing project with New York artist Ginger Brooks Takahashi and fellow Montrealer Logan MacDonald that “responds to the urgent task of activating and archiving queer culture.” Their zines posters buttons and silkscreened objects are often small parts of larger installations.
Their most recent project Trade Flags is a set of three limited edition hand-silkscreened hankies. The hanky — a subtle but important part of gay sexual history — was a jumping off point for an exhibition on queer nightlife in Berlin. Gay hanky code refers to the practice of wearing a coloured hanky in a back pocket to signify sexual predilections and acts. The code emerged in the 1950s and continues today with an expanded set of meanings. For example someone with a black hanky worn in the left pocket signals that they are a heavy sadomasochist who takes the dominant role. Many people who attended the exhibition encountered hanky code for the first time. “The sexiness or erotic nature can be concealed and private even when you are in public” she says.
On the other hand “we found it interesting that everyone and their dog is flagging – maybe brown in the left pocket [meaning the relatively rare “scat top” which is someone who poos on others] for example — and they have absolutely no idea. People might be in for quite a surprise!” she says. Trade Flags features three colours: grey (bondage) pink (dildo fuck) and fluorescent yellow. There was no sexual act attributed to fluorescent yellow so Hogan Finlay introduced the new colour to symbolize female ejaculation within the traditionally gay-male-exclusive code. The patterns on the custom hankies feature drawings of queer sexual imagery: two pairs of lady legs locked in a scissor-fuck gloves and raised fists.
When asked if she thinks queer artists are responding against a neo-conservative political climate with sexually explicit work and alternative materials Hogan-Finlay talks about access to materials and the spread of riot girl punk and zine cultures over several decades. She also says that although DIY feminist and queer art has an esthetic that’s often coherent with broader indie culture sex as subject matter provokes different questions. “For example is vaginal imagery sexy is it pure sex is it feminist? What if it is made by a woman? Or is it just the body?”
