Fourth Dot: Research - Fun Fatale

Fourth ; Research - Fun Fatale

Mathilde is becoming a centenarian this June. Born in 1919, a year after WWI in Palestine, she was forced to marry at the age of fourteen. After a couple of attempts to run back to her parent's house, she finally understood how the system worked. Instead of running away to her parents in Jerusalem, she escaped to 'Eden Cinema'. The first cinema of Tel Aviv exposed her to an image of a different kind of woman. A temptress, a"man-eater", femme fatale - a woman that chooses her own path and does not commit herself to anyone or anywhere.

She made it her vocation to become a banker's wife, though never trusting the banking system. She married seven times and had countless affairs, always kept on flirting as a remedy for sadness, longevity and control of her own life. She made sure to hurt the system that caused her pain where it hurts the most. There is nothing more scary for the patriarchal order than raising a child that is not biologically yours, under false pretences, inheriting your money and property. Mind you, bankers do not enjoy giving money to strangers. An interesting fact to notice; my grandmother, mother and myself were disinherited by our fathers. I guess that that's the price you have to pay for disobeying. Macabrically, all three of them, were named Jacob (Ya'akov).

As a girl, I learned to reject pleasure and to associate it with guilt, shame and repulsion. Paradoxically, even my grandmother that was herself led by pleasure (at least from the outside) enforced the patriarchal regime. She caught me playing doctor and patient with my friend when I was about 5 years old. She was furious and told me that if I kept on doing such horrible things, blood would come out of my private parts until I'll bleed to death. Can you imagine how scared I was when I got my first period?

Female pleasure is risky business in a male society where possession is a core value. According to Biological Anthropologist Helen Fisher, it became a threat from the moment humanity turned into an agricultural society. In her book 'The Sex Contract – The Evolution of Human Behavior', she states:

"Women's worst invention was the plough. With the beginning of plough agriculture, men's role became extremely powerful. Women lost their ancient jobs as collectors."

(Helen Fisher)

Fisher explains that in the hunter-gatherer society women had an equal role. About 90% of the food was collected by women and children. Hunting was done by males on special occasions, while gathering women were free to roam and had several sexual partners. With the invention of the plough, physical strength became important. Women were domesticated and lost their freedom to move, now they were seen as a possession. With the new logic of the feeding system came a way of thinking and acting: the most important value in agricultural society is to pass on land from father to son. Female pleasure, therefore, was perceived as a threat. If a woman follows her desires, you never know who is the father of that son that ploughs the fields.

If the theory of Fisher is correct, female pleasure was denied for 10,000 years. We were not allowed to choose our partner, our playmates, our destiny. We couldn't have possession but were possession ourselves. We could not dance (we had to pretend to be bitten by a spider to take a spin). We were not allowed to sing; according to the Jewish Talmod ", a woman's voice is her vagina" therefore women were prohibited to sing, in extreme situations even to have their voice heard.

Luckily, with the coming of industrialisation, women came back to the workforce. The 'Spinning Jenny' was invented in 1764, this machine spins more than one ball of yarn or thread at a time, making it easier and faster to make cloth. It is one of the first machines that spurred the industrial revolution. It is interesting to notice that the word 'spinster' (an unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage) shares an etymological root with the Spinning Jenny. Unmarried women could support themselves without a man, working as spinsters. This invention granted women to stay single, whether by choice or by force.

Fun, pleasure and sexuality are, therefore, fatal for a woman in the patriarchal society. While writing these lines, I ponder upon my plea, wondering if it's outdated. The feminist revolution took place forty years ago, our society is no longer agrarian, as machines took over manpower. Yet, when I talk to women of all ages I clearly see we are still programmed to physically deny pleasure.I notice my dismissive behaviour at times and wonder about my inner restrictions when it comes to gender programming. It is not surprising that the women I am interested in, turned out to be what I call "Fun-Fatale", using a subordinate attitude to take back control over their lives. Leading lives designed by themselves, within the dominated system.

My second "Fun-Fatale" muse is Annaliese. She was born in 1946, a child of her time, the so-called baby boomers. Anneliese travelled to India from Amsterdam, hitchhiking through Pakistan at the age of 17. Later she squatted an island with two men and a goat. Then moved to Berlin in the early eighties, living in a commune. She lost her job as a social worker at the psychiatric hospital for smoking weed with a patient. Anneliese rejected the order of things and learned how to live in the margins of society with very little money. She used her camera to navigate her world.

Anneliese has an extensive photo and video archive, which she permitted me to use. She used her camera for pleasure; beauty gives her fulfilment, in turn, browsing and editing her images gives me fulfilment.

Then, there is me, I freely exiled from the male order of things, such as my fatherland and the army of that land, migrating to a place where being jailed seemed to offer more freedom. I became a Fun Fatale as well, guided by pleasure; spending my days studying for fun and my nights working as an image pusher sipping cocktails. However, when I started the master I decided to give up the pleasures that didn't serve me anymore and focus on a more substantial existence. Nevertheless, I insist to design this new life and I am determined to include pleasure and fun into my practice.

Though my initial contact with my third muse, Merel Westermann was during the nightlife, she represents another way of emancipation. She took part in two feminine movements: natural birth and natural death. Merel was a midwife for twenty years and changed her vocation to become an undertaker about fifteen years ago. Natural childbirth became popular in the seventies with the idea that giving birth is as natural as anything gets, therefore, it should not be institutionalized. Around the same time hospices and palliative care widely spread in the Western world. The voices of this movement were mainly feminine such as the 1969 bestseller by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: "On Death and Dying". In her book Kubler-Ross states:

“We live in a very particular death-denying society. We isolate both the dying and the old, and it serves a purpose. They are reminders of our own mortality. We should not institutionalize people.

We can give families more help with home care and visiting nurses, giving the families and the patients the spiritual, emotional, and financial help in order to facilitate the final care at home.”

(Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)

My research that started with questions about new death narratives in a non-religious society is now revolving around narratives of Fun Fatales as examples for modes of freedom within the patriarchal order. For my project "Through the eye of the needle" I will weave these personal stories into a tapestry of narratives and images about women over the course of a hundred years. My grandmother, who is still alive, chose her own way of practising freedom, so did Anneliese, Merel and myself. It is a project about modes of freedom in a given time and place in history (their stories). If Mathilde would have been born in Anneliese's time, I assume she would have joined the flower power movement (one of her many mottos was: "wear more sex and put a flower in your hair"). The research and the project revolve around the freedom to keep on seeking, changing and evolving.