Hug/Hold - 2012
This performance took place over the course of 2 hours. There was a posted invitation to "Hug/Hold me as long as you want or until you feel awkward and want to stop". I am continually motivated to explore the dynamics of touch in social space: to examine the limits of individual comfort around physical connection with other humans, taboo's regarding touch that evince the sexualization of all touch, and the corresponding cultural constraints associated with public display.
Plein Air Life Drawing - 2011
_http://www.artisticfailure.com/2012/01/03/diana-stapleton-plein-aire-life-drawing/
(This writing theorizes the performance from the point of view of Failure - as an element of a creative process)
I am a figure model for drawing classes but I don’t draw. I don’t draw because I have never been very good at it and I lack the patience necessary for perfecting it. I am an artist insecure about my failure to master a craft of any traditional artistic merit. I have however mastered the craft of modeling for art.
It is an important personal and political activity to stand without shame in my body, despite that my relationship with my body is primarily about shame. I have found that in the moments when I am modeling I am more allied with my body than at most other times.
In this performance I set the terms of the situation and facilitated a public life drawing event. When people draw, their engagement is with the materials and their own practice at representing what they see. There are variations in skill, and projection but in many ways it ceases to be about the body standing in front of them.
Plein Aire is an art historical movement that brings the painter into natural light and out into nature, somewhat ironically the figure in life drawing classes is rarely seen in natural light because of prohibitions against nakedness. Drawing is an anachronism in the contemporary world. Attempting to engage the public in such unmediated activity was set to fail from the outset. I enlisted many people to come to the event and I encouraged curious passersby to draw me - instead of just photograph and videotape me. After I assured them that skill was not a requirement, several of them participated by drawing. Many of them courteously declined.
The violence that is done to women creates reluctance or an inability to fully occupy their bodies. Most women are afraid to be naked in public space. De-sexualizing nakedness, might decrease the violence done to women by others and to themselves. This is a huge goal. Standing naked as a woman in primarily gay male space that is contested for its use as a naked area made me conspicuously female. In this contested space devoid of women, what am I doing here? Art as historically and institutionally sanctioned space for women and for nudity brought the answer to that question, and legitimated my presence, albeit through a bizarre dislocation.
Staging a Public Life Drawing Event gave me public voice and visibility. There is a directness to being seen only as human - unfettered by the façade of cultural signification that is expressed in the way we dress and what we say when we choose to speak. When I am naked the most evident element is my female body. That I am queer is invisible. That I am an anarchist is invisible. That I have hairy legs, armpits and bush is visible. That I am socially awkward in groups is invisible. There is a confidence or audacity that is conveyed by my physical presence as a naked woman in public space, that too is beyond words.
Diana Stapleton 2011
(This writing theorizes the performance from the point of view of Failure - as an element of a creative process)
I am a figure model for drawing classes but I don’t draw. I don’t draw because I have never been very good at it and I lack the patience necessary for perfecting it. I am an artist insecure about my failure to master a craft of any traditional artistic merit. I have however mastered the craft of modeling for art.
It is an important personal and political activity to stand without shame in my body, despite that my relationship with my body is primarily about shame. I have found that in the moments when I am modeling I am more allied with my body than at most other times.
In this performance I set the terms of the situation and facilitated a public life drawing event. When people draw, their engagement is with the materials and their own practice at representing what they see. There are variations in skill, and projection but in many ways it ceases to be about the body standing in front of them.
Plein Aire is an art historical movement that brings the painter into natural light and out into nature, somewhat ironically the figure in life drawing classes is rarely seen in natural light because of prohibitions against nakedness. Drawing is an anachronism in the contemporary world. Attempting to engage the public in such unmediated activity was set to fail from the outset. I enlisted many people to come to the event and I encouraged curious passersby to draw me - instead of just photograph and videotape me. After I assured them that skill was not a requirement, several of them participated by drawing. Many of them courteously declined.
The violence that is done to women creates reluctance or an inability to fully occupy their bodies. Most women are afraid to be naked in public space. De-sexualizing nakedness, might decrease the violence done to women by others and to themselves. This is a huge goal. Standing naked as a woman in primarily gay male space that is contested for its use as a naked area made me conspicuously female. In this contested space devoid of women, what am I doing here? Art as historically and institutionally sanctioned space for women and for nudity brought the answer to that question, and legitimated my presence, albeit through a bizarre dislocation.
Staging a Public Life Drawing Event gave me public voice and visibility. There is a directness to being seen only as human - unfettered by the façade of cultural signification that is expressed in the way we dress and what we say when we choose to speak. When I am naked the most evident element is my female body. That I am queer is invisible. That I am an anarchist is invisible. That I have hairy legs, armpits and bush is visible. That I am socially awkward in groups is invisible. There is a confidence or audacity that is conveyed by my physical presence as a naked woman in public space, that too is beyond words.
Diana Stapleton 2011
Dog Park Surveillance in Pacific Heights - 2009
This performance takes place in a Pacific Heights park in San Francisco. The performance is one hour long. I walk and sit, doing one lap around the park. I am documenting passersby in their interaction with their dogs and each other. I "shoot from the hip" without looking at the people and in an effort not to be seen or noticed much of the documentation is a chance operation. This performance addresses notions of surveillance, voyeurism, exploitation, wealth/privilege, janitorial/custodial or menial labor, and isolation.
Exploring exploitation:
Control of ones own representation; Subject/Object
The exploitation of the individual in capitalist society
Financial exploitation of the the working class
Reproductive exploitation of animals for breeding hierarchies
Exploring exploitation:
Control of ones own representation; Subject/Object
The exploitation of the individual in capitalist society
Financial exploitation of the the working class
Reproductive exploitation of animals for breeding hierarchies
High Speed Surveillance in Downtown Tucson - 2010
This performance takes place while I am driving in a car through the streets of Tucson, Az. I document people on the sidewalks and walking through crosswalks. As a pedestrian in Tucson I always feel very vulnerable and conspicuous crossing at the enormous intersections - while all the drivers waiting watch me walk across the street. This is an exploration of my internal relationship as subject/object and conversely my relationship as the voyeur. I explore the power of recording the image of strangers. And the fear about what they would do if they were to catch me photographing them. The absurdity is that I am mostly moving at high speeds thereby rendering most of the figures unrecognizable.
Surveillance:
Anonymity vs. celebrity
self monitoring vs. monitoring the actions of others
Xenophobia
Power and Consent:
The cultural consent to mass anonymous surveillance and our concurrent anxiety about being photographed or videotaped by people close enough for us to see it when it is happening.
We simultaneously consent to generalized paranoia/phobia about being controlled or anonymously documented by the government or individual people, while remaining powerless about taking any action to change it.
Surveillance:
Anonymity vs. celebrity
self monitoring vs. monitoring the actions of others
Xenophobia
Power and Consent:
The cultural consent to mass anonymous surveillance and our concurrent anxiety about being photographed or videotaped by people close enough for us to see it when it is happening.
We simultaneously consent to generalized paranoia/phobia about being controlled or anonymously documented by the government or individual people, while remaining powerless about taking any action to change it.
Jim's Art Show Host - 2009
In this performance I am dressed as a Girl Scout Brownie and I am trying to get people to purchase buttons/badges of female breasts and genitals with words on them such as "Hole", "Host" and "Nurse".
"Jim" is my pseudonym in certain performative and online settings for the irony that women are generally not given notice in the art world. Historically it is standard practice for men to use womens bodies as subject matter, whereas women discussing or using their bodies as artists or just as women is a threat to the status quo. "Jim" as the author is also humorous in this context where I am bedecked in the accoutrements of girlhood indoctrination.
Hole/Host:
Ideas of reward, girlhood, indoctrination, coming of age, the sexualized body of women, marriage, compulsory reproduction, nurture/nurse, the female body as host, the role of women as host in a physical, social and metaphoric sense.
"Jim" is my pseudonym in certain performative and online settings for the irony that women are generally not given notice in the art world. Historically it is standard practice for men to use womens bodies as subject matter, whereas women discussing or using their bodies as artists or just as women is a threat to the status quo. "Jim" as the author is also humorous in this context where I am bedecked in the accoutrements of girlhood indoctrination.
Hole/Host:
Ideas of reward, girlhood, indoctrination, coming of age, the sexualized body of women, marriage, compulsory reproduction, nurture/nurse, the female body as host, the role of women as host in a physical, social and metaphoric sense.
Art Model Manifesto - 2010
GAS IS UP - photo document 2009
I closed my business in the economic crash of 2008. At the beginning of 2008 the gas prices were rising and eventually hit about four dollars a gallon. The rise in gas doubled food costs and all other operational costs. Many other restaurant owners at the time struggled similarly and all of the small local distributors I used for my products started struggling and raising their prices to manage some sort of balance for the sudden increase in cost. After closing my business I watched the gas prices drop to just over a dollar. The gas market was sinking as people started riding their bikes to work and giant cars and trucks stopped selling. In the media propaganda said that "India and China were growing at exponential rates" and was intended as some sort of explanation for the dramatic gas increase as it suggested some supply demand increase. India and China however did not just suddenly grow so it was interesting to hear this cited by so many people as the reason for cost of gas increase. Those in control of the gas prices eventually recognized that there was a limit and the gas prices suddenly and dramatically decreased. This gas price was a record low at just over a dollar. I have never in my driving lifetime known the prices to be this low. This brought to my attention the arbitrariness of the U.S. markets. Especially gas prices. Food prices fluctuate relative to gas prices. I documented the fluctuations for a fairly undramatic period of six months.
