Pleasure and Pain

A student e-mailed me the other day with some questions about my artistic practice, which is always really great in the way that I could talk about myself and what I do forever, but it's always better when someone invites that dialogue. Anyway, one of the questions was about live art and why people would choose to cut themselves under the bracket of 'performance art' and defy natural instincts of not cutting oneself.

Before I go any further, I wouldn't like to say I am advocating self-harm. I have never judged anyone for their desire to self-express inside or outside of the context of 'art', BUT I proposed those artists who are actively engaged with pain do so because the aesthetic of performance art lies within this dilemma. Live art's aesthetic lies in that relationship between pleasure and pain in order to achieve beauty.

My conclusion was "To bring it to a more down to earth everyday level, when you really love someone it is the best feeling in the world and yet it hurts so much at the same time. That is what true beauty is all about - feeling pleasure and pain simultaneously."

For some reason these words came back to haunt me tonight when I listened to 'Summer In Siam' by The Pogues. It is a song that reminds me of someone I loved. It is a song that reminds me of falling in love on a warm summer's day. And yet the lyrics simply state "When it's summer in Siam, then all I really know is that I truly am in the summer in Siam." It makes my heart ache because of the simplicity of the words mixed with the memories.

I have avoided listening to this song for such a long time until tonight. And I felt it: it was a small reminder of what love is, what beauty is. An indescribable joy mixed with a pointed melancholy. The pleasure that seems to fill you with mindfulness, with wanting to be right there in that moment, and yet seems to ache only in your heart.

The King of Beauty in rehearsal

Since investigating my piece, the King of Beauty, a lot of notions have come to me both through feedback and through investigating the notions and connotations of this word. The biggest surprise is when, whilst wearing make up, I performed a scratch performance of it that lasted about ten minutes and someone described it as 'misogynistic'.

I found this intriguing. The references I made in this short piece were feminine, for example at one point I talk about getting the wrong Barbie for Christmas, or being called a slut, and then it struck me that these people associated these things as gender specific. In my mind, I had found them equally applicable, laudable and laughable about both men and women.

In a way, that has challenged my own beliefs and preconceptions of 'femininity' and 'adrogyny'. Unfortunately, femininity is placed in the line of 'that which is not masculine'. Androgyny is something that escapes the general concensus- for example, that which is not masculine is feminine, that which is not feminine is an imitation of masculinity. Masculinity seems to have defined terms and rigorous structure, making it difficult to achieve any sort of masculine 'ideal'.

It then gave me a slight insight into the objetification of women. I've been listening to a lot of Karen Finley of late, which could explain my change in performance style and focus.

Of course, I am hesitant to make blanket statements. I think for someone as liberal as me, to be confronted with such a gender defined term that I feel is something I am a million miles away from has been an experience, and something to delve into and explore.