The BREAKUP

This catalogue is a conpainion to The BREAKUP, exhibited at 107 Projects, 107 Redfern Street, Redfern NSW 2061.

The BREAKUP 23 July – 27 July 2014 thebreakupexhibition.com.au

No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form without permission from the artists and publisher. /100

TABLE OF CONTENTS p.05 FOREWORD Luke Letourneau

p.06 WHETHER WE FALL OUT OF LOVE Amy Bambach p.08 THEREIN LIES LOVE John Burns p.11 IPSEITY Ben Barnes p.14 MUSICAL BREAKUPS: A JOURNEY OF GENRES FROM 1997-2013 Tony Kingston p.17 LINKS Lauren Yvonne Bonner p.20 ANCIENT/LOVERS/OF THE INTERNET Boo Patrick p.23 CONTINUITIES, RUPTURES, AND REPETITIONS IN QUEER POLITICS AND ACTIVISM Paul Kelaita p.26 BREAKUP INSTRUCTIONS (PERFORMANCE PIECE) Emma Jenkins p.28 CASH, CONDOMS & CIGARETTES Hannah Story p.31 THE ARTISTS

FOREWORD

We are all flailing. Within all of us is the desire to have a connection, to feel we are not alone, to be grounded by something greater than the individual. Every link that we make is a link to something greater, with the obvious flip-side being, every link we lose the closer we are to isolation, to loneliness, to being lost. This frantic and insatiable need to have a base is a core concept of The BREAKUP. A breakup is a rupture from the known, the comfortable and the static. A turmoil resulting from a physical and/or emotional displacement of place, space, selfhood, time and intimacy guide the exhibition’s artists as they enter into their new territories. The works exhibited are both the artefacts of decaying bonds but also the result of aftermaths.

These artists interact with their chosen media both as a tool to project ideas but also an avenue to exploit limits. Be it the political or the intimate, the works are reliant on the spectacle of separation to interpret the notions at the core of breaking up. While they may pull from different internal and external factors they are all linked by the way these influence on the self and its interaction with the world.

The installation of The BREAKUP is accompanied by this book as both a companion to the specific ideas presented by its artists, but also a standalone artefact where the concepts of the exhibition have been responded to in the medium of text.

Luke Letourneau Exhibition Curator Catalogue Editor

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WHETHER WE FALL OUT OF LOVE AMY BAMBACH

An encounter with heartbreak is something we all have in common.

Whether we fall out of love, lose the love of our lives or suffer love unrequited, everybody has an experience to share. But as much as we outwardly lament, secretly everybody loves a little bit of heartache. Especially if we are spectating.

Whether it’s two people you know or two strangers from across the globe, stories of other peoples’ breakups are strangely captivating. We seek them out and entwine ourselves in them, driven by an innate tendency to play the voyeur.

It’s that same tendency that sees us stalk Facebook dramas, trawl articles on celebrity splits and compulsively watch MTV’s Splitsvilla. We want to be privy to the turmoil of other people’s relationships and the more turbulent the better.

In art, just as in life, I want to find out the juicy bits. Millais’ gently drowning maiden, Ophelia, is a classic symbol of love unrequited. But as an image of heartbreak, it just doesn’t quite satisfy. I want to see the mess that I know comes with break ups. And so do you. Frida Kahlo’s A Few Small Nips (Passionately in Love), features a naked bloodied woman, sprawled on a bed beneath her dagger-wielding partner. The image is undeniably powerful. But what captures my attention is its use as an allegory for Kahlo’s tempestuous relationship with husband, Diego Rivera. We are provided a small window into their private drama and I can’t help but want to peek through it and take a look around.

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Our macabre fascination with other people’s experience of heartbreak is further indicated by the success of works such as Tracey Emin’s The Bed. Half crime scene, half diary, the work lays bare the artist’s post-break up meltdown amongst urine-stained sheets and used condoms. Reading through interviews and text surrounding The Bed, the hunt to collect the destructive details of Emin’s breakup is just as interesting as the work itself, if not more so.

So what is this captivation with other people’s distress? Queen of breakup art, Sophie Calle simply argues that grief is inevitably a better subject than joy.

And she should know, having listened to and retold countless stories of others’ heartbreak in her work Exquisite Pain. “Do people like hearing someone’s story about how happy they are? Not usually.” And as heartless as it sounds, I would have to agree.

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THEREIN LIES LOVE JOHN BURNS

Nothing breaks the heart more eloquently than the unexpected letter that you half expected to get. “Dearest John”, it read “I have some happy news, I am engaged…”. It was then that I discovered that the point of view of happiness is usually indicative of your position as being in the love affair, not on the receiving end of an efficacious dispensation of commiseration. A break up is when the love boat arrives in hell and you are told to disembark. Sunscreen, sensible shoes and a hat are seldom provided. In my case I loved someone who wanted a friend, called me her muse, and treated me like a mushroom.

Needless to say that my response to the news was gracious. After wishing her all the very best, I told her to get rid of everything that I had ever given her and to next contact me on my birthday. It was a date she had always dutifully forgotten. On my birthday three months later she wrote back and told me of how upset I had made her. She said that in the intervening time she was now married, and even happier than when she was engaged. Always thoughtful, she explained that she hadn’t wanted her revelation of loving someone else to make me unhappy and in turn ruin her special day. She felt that I had confused a mutual love of words with an actual love for me. Understandable I guess since communication between friends is usually based upon sincere words as opposed to membership in a poetry appreciation society.

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Our “friendship” outlasted at least two of her boyfriends, her dog and an axolotl named Clive who apparently succumbed to a fungal infection. I’ve learnt that love does not occur as it does in fiction. The second glances are all mistaken and the hidden feelings are in fact not there at all. All you are left with is at best a variation of the Romeo and Juliet story but without the sight gags and witty dialogue. My novella had large elements of truth, several suspect chapters but was soundly based on delusion and myth. It ended in the way of all such tales; very badly for me. I believed that the next person you meet will be different from the last one you knew. This is a scientific impossibility unless greyhounds really do it for you in a taboo kind of way. Human frailty is at the heart of love, and its loss. A beautiful notion for a renaissance painting, but it doesn’t do you a world of good in real life. Saying “I’m happy for you” and looking bleary eyed may lead the high moral ground, but where is the victory in loneliness? The truth of the matter is you lost, your world is dead and no perspective shifting guide book written by the author of “a thousand and one ways to un flat pack furniture” will help. As I said, love is mostly fiction.

Don’t give up. I say this not out of optimism, just don’t let the bastards drag you down. Many believe that they have met the “one”. Only in hindsight do they realise that it was the wrong one. And who doesn’t want to be around to see an Ex eat the dirt? A breakup does that to you. You are left screwed up where the only places to go are a psychiatrist’s chair or “Madam Lash’s boudoir de pain” and yes I have both numbers. The breakup gives you the reality of a situation you previously were unable to admit. In the end I was just an interesting guy for her to hang around with until the right one came along. Interesting in the way that any old soldier, ex prisoner or illegal hairdresser might be, should the right set of circumstances present themselves. I was not her type. I always wondered that if like a great gambler she thought I might leave the game if she showed her hand too early. I must have been something other guys were not. Stupid probably. 50% of all love songs agree with me, 45% don’t, whilst a thoughtprovoking 5% written during the summer of 1967 suggest love would be a lot easier if I moved to San Francisco and engaged the services of mind altering chemicals.

It is the breakup that defines the nature of love. What we know of the human heart is too often defined by inference. A knowledge more in line with what is revealed about the moon by the movement of the tides as opposed to actually visiting the lunar surface. The breakup clarifies the action from the affectation.

Afterglow is sticky, messy and damp. It is our ability to find beauty in these 09

moments that counts. Nobody actually ever falls in love. We fall in love with the idea of being in love. For me it began coquettishly, defined by fumbled zippers and stolen glances. The end was all Pompeii, dead memories covered by volcanic ash. But there has to be something, to make the disaster worthwhile?

Every train wreck romance has a glimmer of hope in it. Those moments where at least for someone the future could go either way. Unbridled glimpses into alternate universes however fragile that keep you going full steam ahead despite the iceberg warnings. Amongst the embers of a dead relationship you can critique yourself, but your heart and genitalia were in the right place even if your other half’s were not.

What you won’t get from me is her side of the story. The closest I ever came to that kind of intimacy was the night I spent minding her cat when she was out of town. Surrounded by the bits and pieces that define everyone’s life, it was all there, except for her. An alphabetised movie collection, the odd torn finger nail and a feline who wanted nothing to do with me. The neon caricature of her when she was three that her parents now divorced gave her, the book from her godfather the writer now deceased, and the potted frangipanis on her veranda.

This was not the domain of a super villain, just a girl I once knew. No life is without its complexities or its difficult facets. Am I that bad? Quite possibly. It is easy and deserving to demonise the ones who cast us adrift, but sometimes hard to admit we once saw our own reflection in the mirror where they put on their makeup.

It is true; there are a million ways to say I love you. It can be said in the phrases “do up your seatbelt”, “don’t do that line of cocaine”, and “I think you have a cappuccino moustache”. I love you can be said in a million and one ways.

However, I can confidently say that the phrase “I am married, and I would still like to be your friend”, is not one of them. Breakups are as much about personal freedom as they are mourning a lost world. Supernova’s come from the broken hearts of stars. Even Elvis visited ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. We all do. Love resides in our dreams and our imaginings as much as it does our hard and fast, cut and dry realities. It exists in good deeds or good people and is as important in a fleeting glance as words engraved upon a marble effigy. In the joining together or breaking apart, therein lies love.

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IPSEITY

BEN BARNES

The ‘Quebecas’ aren’t stupid. They’re talking about university strikes and after I raised the subject, the push for Quebec’s independence from Canada, which I’d spoken about with some Australian friends previously and we’d all agreed that it was economically ridiculous before complaining about the snootyness of the French. The Quebecas aren’t socially adept either, especially considering that I’m on my own here, chipping away at this conversation while they, the team, give nothing but shitty closed answers. I suppose the fact that I’m now transcribing the situation as opposed to grappling with it suggests that I’ve also given myself over to social ineptitude, if I ever had it. Impossible to say.

This is one of those standard uncomfortable hurdles towards getting comfortable somewhere. They’ve started translating some Quebecan folk songs for me now, a grand step towards actually enjoying this conversation, which was the point, so I should be happy now.

Hours later I’m no longer an outsider. I don’t step lightly on the creaking (A word I’ve just learnt is similar to the spanish ‘crujir’) floorboards and I walk straight down the spiral staircase before peaking through the slats to prepare myself for the group who might be comfortable below me. I’ve adopted the tone of a loud northern Mexican who’s turned up and sprinkled us all with the word 11

‘crazy’. He says: This rain dude it’s like, fucking crazy man and I’m just likeahhhhhh. Then I say: Yeah dude, it’s been crazy weather for the last few days right, nothing the sky does can surprise me anymore.

There’s a German tattoo artist who’s talking about his glow in the dark paintings. He says you can pay 10 million dollars for a Picaso but when you turn the light off, where’s your 10 million dollars? Which sounds alright as a thing to say, but words don’t mean what they sound like, especially in groups. He’s passing a joint around, he’s been doing that all night. Now he’s telling us that climate change is a lie, corporations can make money, all part of a cycle dating back to the ice age. My Mexican voice-box agrees and says something about most scientists being crazy anyway.

Later when he says that the Mexican narcos don’t really have a negative effect on the Mexican people I lean over to the only Quebeca who came down to the bar and make a ‘this guy’ joke. We have a hearty laugh but then the joint comes round again and more drinks and soon he’s gone and I’m dazzling the rest of them with an embarrassingly simple card trick.

I will wake up tomorrow with a throat like distressed leather and the sun will shine on my face as if to say: “You drank to feel better and now you feel worse and watch me shine!”

Having woken up I realise that last night was all bullshit, but mostly because it hurts now, not because of anything I actually did. The meaning of that time is receding into the distance, making some kind of farewell gesture I can’t decipher. Hangovers are bonding times, basking in the glory of shared destruction. Our ashen faces pay testament to the fires that raged. Rage we refer to with detached remarks, knowing that tonight will be easier because we will all be caricatures.

The hostel is perhaps the most sordid, passionless and blissful invention of the last 30 years. The couches are sagging under the collective weight of scripted conversations.

The young pair from Alaska are organising an early flight home because their friend has passed away. The Alaskan boy keeps talking about nightmares where someone holds him down, and he’s leaving a bottle of sweet mescal with us, which I will later throw up a little bit in my mouth and float to the other side of the pool to spit it out in secret.

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Finally the clique of beautiful French girls have joined the rest of us in the bar.

Now we can play ‘spin the wheel’, which involves touching, drinking and nudity.

It gives the fans what they want. My first few beers get me level again. I find myself sucking them down, my throat still gulping as I lower the bottle from my mouth. Petrified of thirst. I am licking salt off French breasts and I should be kissing her deeper as I bite the lime out of her mouth. Beer bongs are much easier than skulling drinks from the bottle. Shots of mescal make me shake my head and say ‘woooo’ and in that moment I feel good. We say cheers a lot and apologise when we step on each others feet, then cheers again. I have to swap my clothes with a tiny Canadian girl. Are we still in Mexico?

I wonder if I’ve become the life of the party. When bold comments are made they look to me for a response. I’ve become the spruiker for this hostels predatory business model. Maybe this is the only good use for GoPro cameras? This place is a bar with rooms attached, not a hostel with a bar. We are gambling on intimacy, every bottle we pop is a pull on the pokey lever. I’ve lied to them and their probably lying to me. The hostel bar is an elaborate clown school where we test out our saddest characters. Tomorrow we will sigh and spend at least 15 minutes in clear view, scrawling entries into just-too-big-foryour-pocket-sized, leather bound notebooks.

What are they writing about me? How will I place myself in these scenes when I tell my friends? What are they writing about me? Will the hostel put photos of me on the wall? What are they writing about me?

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MUSICAL BREAKUPS: A JOURNEY OF GENRES FROM 1997-2013 TONY KINGSTON

White Town – 'Your Woman' (1997)

I wasn't allowed to watch much television as a kid. Not because my parents were really strict and deprived me of it but because they were always watching shows which I found uninteresting or unexciting like The 7:30 Report or 60 Minutes. This is when I decided to spend a lot of my nights after school listening to the radio.

My favourite show was the Hot 30 Countdown, where people used to vote for the songs they liked and the most popular ones would be played. Even though almost the same songs were played every night until they were forgotten about, I always used to listen.

The track I used to enjoy the most was the one hit wonder 'Your Woman' by White Town. It was a fantastic pop song which had a really unusual sound to it.

Even though I heard it so regularly, I never got sick of it. Pop music was all I was really exposed to at this stage and I'm not complaining either.

The Living End – 'Prisoner Of Society' (1998) 14

I remember waking up early every weekend without fail to watch rage's Aria Top 50 when I was only about 11 years old. It was such an exciting way of discovering music at a young age. The first time I heard this song pretty much sums up how I got into rock music.

I thought the film clip was totally bad ass and hadn't heard a guitar riff like that before. My pop music taste soon vanished and I found rock music had taken over. It was during this time I couldn't wait for my first mosh pit experience.

Mad Caddies – 'Mary Melody' (2001) Following my appreciation of rock and roll music, I decided I wanted to hear something a bit more varied. The opportunity arose when a friend lent me a Reel Big Fish LP and suddenly I became interested in ska music.

I liked the fact that it was fast paced, fun and there were heaps of trumpets. All of these sort of bands also had a carefree attitude going on and as a 14 year old this was exactly what I was looking for, something to tell me not to take high school too seriously.

Radiohead – 'Where I End and You Begin' (2003) I'm going to take a valid guess and say I was probably about 15 when I first really started to get into Radiohead. When I did, I began purchasing album after album.

I loved the atmosphere their music had. I remember being on holidays once doing something as simple as walking down the street listening to Kid A and it felt like the world around me had abruptly stopped. This was certainly the time when my music taste matured and I became a lot more open minded about what I listened to.

After giving Radiohead's catalogue prior to 2003 some heavy listening, Hail To The Thief came out and I was instantly addicted. 'Where I End and You Begin' I believe is one of their most underated tracks released to date. I remember my friends and I used to listen to it while we were having pre-drinks before high school house parties. In this day and age that song would probably be considered to be a strange choice in order to get warmed up for a party but we found it to be relaxing and for some reason, uplifting.

Cut Copy – 'Hearts On Fire' (2008) There was once a time when indie dance was almost all I listened to. I couldn't 15

get enough of it. I think a lot of it was to do with the amount of fun I had at music festivals seeing bands that you can dance to. The energy of a rock show combined with the music of a club just did it for me. It was the best of both worlds.

Even when I went out clubbing I'd make an effort to hear that same style of music and DJs played this track repeatedly, whether it be a remix of it or the original. Although it's nowhere near as frequent, every time I hear it played out I'm reminded of that unforgettable period of my life, when festivals unleashed the same level of excitement to an early 20 year old as Christmas did to a child.

Darkside – 'The Only Shrine I've Seen' (2013) My current music taste is extremely open, however I'm without a doubt more attracted to music that consists of several different genres within the same song.

I suppose that's my way of saying I want to hear a bit of everything. My favourite Darkside track 'The Only Shrine I've Seen', in particular combines almost all of the genres of music I've loved throughout my entire life - indie, rock, electronica and even blues. Pure bliss!

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LINKS

LAUREN YVONNE BONNER

As she walks through the park to the station, a man wearing a slick new suit strides past and for a moment he’s almost tall enough to be Him. Him A, Him 1.0. The one that started it all. The one that causes her such unease while walking through the park near the station because if you take a right and walk about two kilometres then hop on the three-five-one bus going northbound, you could be a brisk ten minute walk from his house and that’s close enough to make anyone wary of their surroundings. She exhales as he comes closer and it’s not him after all. A mingled feeling of relief and disappointment settles in.

She is not the type to really want to run into ex-lovers, nor did she (usually) go places specifically hoping an ex-lover would be present. Despite this, a popular fantasy persists of confidently striding past someone, wind in your hair, mystery in your eyes, and having them stop for a moment and say to themselves

“Was that? No...no it couldn’t have been” And then in their moment of uncertainty, you turn around and look right through them. Long enough that they get a good look at you and remember your name so they search you on Facebook later that evening and send you a friend request – which you ignore.

Her heart starts to slow to its regular pace as all the built up anticipation dissipates, and she continues walking. Leaving the park however, takes her 17

into the station. The station where Him kissed her goodbye last time. Different Him this time, Him B – a palate cleanser from Him A if you will. Her heart stops relaxing and beats hard, sending out her co-ordinates in morse code to Him B and she punches herself in the chest to show her internal organs who’s boss.

It’s unlikely other hearts can receive morse code, especially considering Him B has no military background, but it isn’t worth the risk. The distinct smell of handrolled cigarette smoke hits her hard in the face and her heart stops completely.

She feels sick to her stomach now, and now she can feel his bedsheets as they were around her, slightly soft from being unwashed, the top sheet balled up at her feet, disregarded completely.

“Angel, do you mind if I have a cigarette?”

“Go for it” She had answered But of course she minded, and the thought of herself bowing so quickly to him makes the bile rise in her stomach. The smoke itself didn’t bother her, not as much as the clichéd notion of a post-coital cigarette, and in 2013 at that. It just doesn’t make any sense. Who even still smokes in 2013 with the tax on tobacco being what it is?

Having so many memories so easily triggered by a simple sniff of a stranger’s cigarette makes her think Him B’s role as palate cleanser hadn’t worked particularly well. After Him B, her palate was left uncleansed, and frankly quite hurt and disappointed. Maybe next time she ought to try sorbet, or sniffing a cup of coffee beans in between men as you do with perfumes.

The gap between Him B and Him C, was respectable, but a respectable gap between men is often a painful one. To account for the respectable gap, Him C was an appropriately disreputable man.

Although, Him C was not disreputable to an objective outsider. Him C is the owner of a successful small business, happily married with a baby on the way.

The only hard evidence that could call into question his respectability would be a slew of text messages to a girl almost half his age. She still has most of his messages saved on her phone, and revisits favourites when the mood strikes, such as;

“You certainly cast a spell on me last night”

“Stop being coy”

“What would you do to me?”

“I’d rather you were sitting on my face” It doesn’t take much for her to be reminded of Him C really. Any man of a certain age could bear a resemblance. She also often finds herself scouring 18

his online profiles for pictures of his strong arms carefully holding his new baby. Rejection doesn’t sting as much when your replacement is a baby. It’s quite understandable. Now standing in the crowded train carriage, she smiles because the businessman’s underarm she’s crammed under smells a bit like Him C did.

Caught in a scent induced trance, she looks up as the doors open to her stop and she has to tear herself away from the underarm without so much as a goodbye to make it out in time. This train station doesn’t garner as much of a visceral response as the other places she frequents, maybe because its so familiar that the sheer amount of memories grounded in this place sort of overflow and blend into a big blur so nothing can stick out as properly traumatic.

Trotting down the concrete steps she can see his silver sedan idling illegally in the taxi zone waiting for her. It is his car, he doesn’t qualify for a ‘Him’ title yet.

He is still present tense, and she still sees him on purpose. He greets her by putting his hand on her knee and she tries not to think about the ghosts of other hands that have rested on that knee while the other one turned the steering wheel. She tries not to associate him with the Hims, but she knows better than to expect her brain to behave itself.

Remembering the idea she had earlier that afternoon on the role of palate cleansers, she suggests stopping at the shops to pick up some sorbet for dessert.

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ANCIENT/LOVERS/OF THE INTERNET BOO PATRICK

“Reality is not my best window.” – MMORPG player The Russian government has declared that the Sims 4, releasing later this year, is to be branded with an adult 18+ rating domestically, citing their duty to protect (presumably non-Ukrainian) children from harm. For anyone unfamiliar with Maxis’ gaming franchise, the Sims’ original game represented a historic first for the ‘gay agenda,’ being the first computer game to offer equal opportunities to both female and male; homo and hetero characters.

If you’re attempting to make young queer people’s lives unliveable, taking the Sims off the market for teenagers isn’t such a dumb idea. As a teenager, I remember retreating into this virtual space during particularly awful days, and feeling that a satisfied life was not only possible, but also achievable. The current generation of gaming includes, as a major component, online contributions by players, who upload their own characters, objects, and buildings, to be shared in other players’ games.

Just as players invariably produce virtual selves made in their (thinner, more symmetrical) images, dating sites similarly aspire towards a kind of airbrushed homogeneity. As ‘research’ for writing this, I made myself an okcupid.com 20

profile, and was overwhelmed by the number of questions asking detailed questions about my beliefs, habits, and sexual mores. In order to present users with matches, their answers are compared, the level of similarity producing a percentage match.

Just as quizzes always tell you not to over think, I found myself stymied upon reflection. Did I really just want myself, with more money and a better haircut; or, is the ‘opposites attract’ ideology more than just a flimsy explanation of heteronormativity? Wasn’t there some benefit to getting to know people of variegated character, and questioning to reassess one’s implicit assumptions and prejudices? Curious, I hit up Ovid and Plato, to see what they had to say on the subject of (hopefully non-pedastic) relationships.

“I’m like Icarus, whose wings melted before he could fuck the Sun.” – Nicky Nichols, Orange is the New Black Greek and Roman mythology is littered with examples of hubris: Icarus and his wings; Narcissus and his reflection; Plato’s soul mates, so content with each other that they could defy the gods. The underlying message: that love is potent, and that duty and responsibility should trump individual passion. As with Romeo and Juliet, attempts to achieve transcendence end in tragedy, the gatekeepers of Mount Olympus paralleling the Putin administration, effectively sending sexually experimental revolutionaries to the gulag.

The myths of Phaedra and Pygmalion go furthest in exposing the porous and indefinite line between self-identification, and the perception of another human being. While, Phaedra, dreaming of a phantasmagorical male lover, is led to consider a question asked subsequently by many a teenage fan of the young, androgynous Leonardo DiCaprio: “Do I want to be with him, or do I want to become him?”

In the case of Pygmalion, the titular character: a sculptor, and most famous spurner of women, becomes sexually enamoured with one of his creations.

Aphrodite takes pity on him, resolving the situation through making the sculptor come alive (personality = unknown). These proto-transgender, or perhaps bigendered models of human sexuality reveal the issue in determining the lover’s projected fantasy, from the beloved’s selfhood.

“All I ever want to be remembered for is being one of the great love affairs.”

– Jaye Breyer P-Orridge 21

The closest embodiment of Plato’s ‘perfect lovers,’ (originally envisaged as eight-limbed and Octopus-like Siamese twins) is, to me, no single marble statue, but instead the body of work produced by Genesis and Jaye P-Orridge during the nineties and noughties. For years preceding Jaye’s death, these artists underwent dozens of cosmetic surgery procedures with the aim of increasing bodily similitude, purchasing clothes in doubles, and dressing themselves in a manner reminiscent of the sadistic parents of twins.

Their work was the material evocation of an orgasm, realised in cuts and stitches in a manner analogous to severely protracted childbirth; as, rather than making a baby, the P-Orridges elected to remake themselves in each other’s image. Though their physical relationship ended with Jaye’s death in 2007, Genesis maintains that s/he is continuing the project for them both, until their reunification after death.

While Mount Olympus/Putin may seek to punish the P-Orridges for their hubris, as they attempted to escape from the socially mandated gender roles and learned behaviour patterns that saturate our world, their symbiotic existence as Platonic equals is surely remarkable. Impossible to break up without destroying entirely, their relationship physically embodies the ‘urge to merge’: a complete relinquishing of individual selfhood. Appealing? Perhaps not. Radical?

Definitely.

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CONTINUITIES, RUPTURES, AND REPETITIONS IN QUEER POLITICS AND ACTIVISM PAUL KELAITA

It’s been over 20 years since the widely known catchcry of early gay liberation began the steady shift from ‘We’re Here! We’re Queer! Get used to it!’ to an arguably more sedate vision, ‘we’re here, we’re queer, and we want to get married!’ or the slightly more sexy ‘we’re here, we’re queer, and we want to get married on the ocean!’ (‘Top Banana’ Arrested Development).

‘The rise of gay marriage exemplifies the ongoing tensions between seeking respectability and asserting difference.’ (Altman, 193) The liberationist vs assimilationist split in queer politics and activism is one that has seeped into the cultural consciousness, even if the terms of debate remain contentious. The liberationist camp is associated with 60’s and 70’s gay liberation politics and protest, which, along with the women’s liberation movement, emphasised difference from a straight, patriarchal, capitalist world.

The assimilationist contingent extended out of a broad neoliberal shift in Western societies during the late 90’s and 00’s that saw queer politics centre on claims for equality. Both positions are not contained to history, nor is there a clear, linear progression from liberation to assimilation. Nowhere has this political rift been more apparent than in contemporary political arguments around samesex marriage. Rather than being stark in the harsh tones of reality, the same23

sex marriage snap seems to have a filter.

‘To extend the conformist embrace of marriage to same-sex couples is to lack imagination.’ (Jagose) But I’ll not explain the reasons why same-sex marriage should be legal (many and more), or why revolving a politics around the marriage institution is problematic. Rather, I’d like to focus on the radical politics that the aftermath of these debates (ongoing) provides. The foreclosure that same-sex marriage enacts on wider queer politics is damaging (who is included in this utopic/ nostalgic vision of marriage?), but is also far from unproductive. In a moment of beautiful, though convoluted, Hegelian synthesis, we are in a contemporariness where the possibilities of change exist beyond same-sex marriage.

It is this relationship to history that illuminates the possibility for a futurity to queer politics. History is present on and through our bodies, and alive on, in, and beyond our politics. Elizabeth Freeman, writing about Shulamith Firestone and the allegorical/performative elements of citational and relational identity, illuminates this point, ‘she claims the word “revolution” not as inheritance, but rather as a placeholder for possibilities that have yet to be articulated’ (742). The gay rights movement, as its relation to queer and to LGBTIQA*, has a curious relationship to temporality: not strictly linear, a tendency towards repetition and reference, an interwoven fabric of connection and deviation. This is not to strain an argument for queer exceptionalism, this relationship to time – and to social movements – has echoes in (to use a rash generalisation) much of human endeavour. It is from this referential, falling far short of reverential, capacity to write a contemporary history that makes possible a nuanced, or at least differently contested, vision of queer politics that seeks to move forward with a foot in each camp. Perhaps like ‘revolution’ for Firestone, ‘marriage’ should be for us: ‘not as inheritance, but rather as a placeholder for possibilities that have yet to be articulated.’ It is often said that same-sex marriage is the equal rights battle of our time. Whether that is or is not is beside the main point, but it’s certainly clear that at the very least it’s something that needs to be moved through, if not passed.

It is not for lack of possibilities that we need to do this. Surely different models of organising equality are available, there are certainly different models of organising relationships - widely removed from the respectable-monogamousmarried triad we are facing. So perhaps rather we should rephrase Freeman, where ‘marriage’ and indeed ‘revolution’ should be for us not the inheritance, but 24

the placeholder for possibilities that have yet to be possible. Perhaps this is part of assimilationist acquiescence, but I like to think of it as a way of maintaining a semblance of sanity while trying to straddle my own part in a politics of visibility.

Indeed, I’ll live by the caveat of another working at the crossroads of queer visibility, representation and history, Karen Tongson: ‘Do forgive the repetition you may find here of what we have seen and heard before: it may contain within it what we never thought we would see or hear’ (20).

Altman, Dennis. The End of the Homosexual, Queensland, University of Queensland Press, 2013 Freeman, Elizabeth. ‘Packing History, Count(er)ing Generations,’ New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2000, pp 727-744 The Hurwitz Company/20th Century Fox Television, ‘Top Banana,’ Arrested Development, episode 1.01, 2003 Jagose, Annamarie. ‘The Trouble with Gay Marriage’ The Conversation, 7th Nov 2013, <http://theconversation.com/the-trouble-with-gaymarriage-19196> Tongson, Karen. Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries, New York, NYU Press, 2011

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BREAKUP INSTRUCTIONS (PERFORMANCE PIECE) EMMA JENKINS

I. The work 1. Aspirate, beginning with relaxed vocal chords and quickly constricting, ending with a slight glottal stop. Pause.

2. Tap the tongue tip to the front palate, then transition to a tucked bottom lip (under upper teeth, or touching) to produce a fricative. Pause.

3. Clench jaw and bring cheeks close to molars, gradually rounding the lips.

Pause and exhale.

4. In silence, wait indefinitely for a response.

II. Aftermath 1. Repeat for the rest of your life. When immobilised (by grief, illness, hunger, apathy, etc), repeat into a mental void and imagine your body performing these actions. Perform the work in your dreams, on the bus in your head, at night when you cannot sleep, in crowded rooms. It is a secret but you will drown in this performance for the rest of your life.

2. Recognise that these declarative actions are not only a performance, but performative. In speaking these words you ostensibly claim their truth, though they guarantee nothing. Destabilising of life and self often follow.

3. Your emotions become bodily installations on a tiny scale. Your heart palpitates at four time its normal rate when someone says certain names, 26

words, dates, when you see certain objects, or pass by certain location. Your eyes involuntarily shut or begin to water or become locked on a plane the rarely corresponds to the material world about your body. Your stomach becomes lead in an alchemically improbable phenomenon.

III. Notes 1. Not site specific. May be performed in any location including, but not limited to: gallery spaces, movie theatres, crowded streets, bathrooms, bedrooms, best friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birthday parties, and so on.

2. All additional equipment/materials/costs is extraneous. Please allow the performance to speak for itself.

3. Work is highly derivative and over-performed, therefore best suited to early career artists who do not intend to construct a body of work around these themes, actions, theories, etc. However, interesting results have been recorded across all age brackets and levels of experience.

4. You receive no commission for performing this work, though you are charged no fee for the installation of the work.

5. To date, no works sold.

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CASH, CONDOMS & CIGARETTES HANNAH STORY

O n the sixteenth day she went to Woolies in the morning, her shopping list concise: cash, condoms, cigarettes. She took the least expensive brand name packet to the self-serve checkout. They were on special: Four Seasons Condoms Naked Closer, Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thinnest tight-fit condom, like wearing nothing at all.

That seemed about right. She bought Stuveys at the counter, got 200 bucks cash-out and stuffed her purchases into her satchel â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that was it.

On the third day she ate cookie dough in the shower.

On the seventh day she drank wine in the bath with the lights off.

On the first day she shattered all their plates, one by one, on the linoleum floor.

On the eighth day she remembered to wash her hair.

On the thirty-first day she woke up smelling like another man. His odour was in her pores, in her hair. She took his2 shirt off and climbed out of bed, surveyed herself in the mirror, pinching at the bags under her eyes, baring her teeth at her semi-naked reflection. In her underwear she explored the unfamiliar room, opening drawers, pulling books from the shelves and flicking through the pages.

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She found last night’s condom wrapper, a couple of hastily hidden porno mags and a pair of women’s underwear.

He2 was the LAX of men, a stopover on the way to a sense of closure, of comfort, but not somewhere anyone stayed for long. At LAX she ate pineapple out of a plastic cup on her way to visit him1 in the States. She spent the two flights flirting with an American exchange student in the next seat over. She slept on his arm and he composed an email message of the best bars and diners in New York for her and offered to show her around Greenwich. She accepted, never turned up for their date, then deleted him off Facebook when she got back to Sydney.

In the shower she washed away his2 scent, scrubbed at her breasts and her cunt. She washed away a sense of guilt. As she brushed her teeth she forgot the taste of the whisky on his full lips and the stubble that rubbed against her ear.

On the fortieth, the fiftieth, the sixty-second day, the sex grew wordless and explicit, reckless and safe, unhurried.

Sex could burn and ache.

Afterwards she coaxed him2 back into her for a second time, fingers caught in his2 hair, before they went to breakfast, then parted.

On the forty-seventh day she sat outside his1 house smoking a cigarette, waiting until the lights went out before she’d let herself in to collect her belongings. He1 was waiting for her inside, as she expected. He1’d written to her on Facebook to say that he1 still had some of her underwear, when she was coming around, he1 wanted to be there. She didn’t want that, but it was his house.

They had laid out the terms on the first day; they could not be friends if they could not be together. They should not make contact. They should keep their future dalliances off Facebook for a considerable period. It didn’t work out that way and each carefully planned status update made that so very clear, each like and each night spent scrolling through the page checking for discernible differences that would somehow prove that he1 or she was still in love or not anymore.

Their parting, and, in a way, their togetherness, was violent. It was an act of violence to let someone else complete him1, to help compose some curated image of himself1, an appendage like a tailored shirt of a wristwatch.

He1 had depth now that he had a weirdgirl artist type, who drank only red wine and collected vinyl records. As they purchased furniture together, as they talked about being someone’s ‘spouse’ and living far away, he1 decided he1 hadn’t seen enough yet. She withdrew, cried often, used shampoo that promised to 29

give new life.

When it was over, she slept and she drank and she danced and she packed up and headed for home. She kissed and she starved and she took drugs and she met people and she loved them fast and often and it burned. She threw herself into Munro, into Didion, into Franzen, into a new him2 who talked to her about Munro and Didion and Franzen.

When it was over, he1 drank an entire bottle of whiskey, talked to no one, bought a one-way ticket to somewhere like Houston. He1 lay awake at night alone in their bed and sometimes when he was lonely he cried or tried to call her up but hung up immediately. Sometimes he sent her a funny video on Facebook, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t or didn’t want to reply.

It happened gradually, tiny moments of doubt had accumulated and blossomed and spread and sucked the life out of them; she’d let herself be subsumed by his1 social circle, his1 interests, his1 family, even his1 home. But then she felt the joy again, in unwrapping a condom, in the sweat of a crowded band room, of a leatherbound notebook.

On the sixty-third day they were alone together, kissing, all tangled limbs and warmth, and it pried into some small part of her. He2 caressed her neck, bit her ear, held her close. He2 pulled her into him, into a them. They spoke while halfasleep, into the dark, hands kneading rounded thighs and warm cunt, pressing against jutting ribs. As light peeked through the curtain she shifted into him2.

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THE ARTISTS Syed Faraz Ali

Isabella Andronos

Laura Anthony

Anton Benois

Lauren Yvonne Bonner

Benjamin Chadbond

Cooper Michael

Clare Powell

Brenton Alexander Smith

Talia Smith

Lucy Zaroyko

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Syed Faraz Ali

Raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Syed Faraz Aliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work evolves from the sociopolitical scenarios of a constantly changing world that is simultaneously so open, yet so hidden. Reality is a core fascination of the artist, yet the reality presented in the work might be understood to be infinitely complex and, perhaps, ultimately elusive.

For this exhibition the artist has presented Guns in Roses, a work that displays a deformation of a kettle and a handgun. The kettle cast in this work is one very specific to Afghanistan and the northern parts of Pakistan, and is used primarily for serving chai. This is a region that is filled with war and guns and one that is displacing large portion of its population. The combination of beauty and havoc is presented as a reminder of the environmental situation in the nation; the land is beautiful and delicate yet one that is now a war zone.

Isabella Andronos

Isabella Andronos is a Sydney based artist and production designer. Much of her work explores processes of decay as it pertains to technology, exploring the visual potential of file corruption, software malfunctions and compression.

As a symbol of our cultural memory, the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;big Hollywood kissâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; can be understood as an inherent part of film history. Commenting on the transition from celluloid to digital, the work the artist presents for this exhibition isolates these kisses and disrupts the data that they are comprised of. The work can be seen an exercise in digital entropy, mutating the idyllic kisses of Hollywood into a layered topography of motion picture images. Functioning as a kind of palimpsest, the kissing scenes become fused together, with the data information altered to create explosions of pixelated colour.

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Laura Anthony

Laura Anthony is an emerging Sydney-based artist working with a range of media. She has diverse interests and a practice built on her meandering life experience.

Delicacy and an unwillingness to allow change are the concept at the core of the artist’s work for The BREAKUP. What is presented is a copper cuff of her wrist, the lines that make up the work are ones that follow the vein’s pulsing movements through the forearm. By exhibited these lines as copper and under a bell jar, all movements are frozen. The active becomes static as overwhelming and uncontrollable change is denied.

Anton Benois

Anton Benois is a multi-disciplinary artist who, since 2011, has been based in Berlin. Born in Moscow in 1979, he first became an immigrant after relocating to Brooklyn at the age of 10. His practice deals with ideology, internal and political forces and their effect on the individual. Modern identity crises and the externalisation versus the internalization of such crises as it varies from individual to individual are a point of fascination. Benois’ own lack of identity as a person from nowhere and everywhere, and the illusion of belonging to something other than the self is an underlying tone in his work.

The breakup of a person from his or her own personal identity is the core issue of Benois’ video for the exhibition. In the video the artist presents himself burning his American and Russian passports, an utterly destructive act of documents that constitute the self.

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Lauren Yvonne Bonner

Lauren Yvonne Bonner is an artist in Sydney. She works with video, stills and performance to explore relationships, and non-relationships â&#x20AC;&#x201C; both based in reality and the fictionalised.

Battling with the aftermath of a breakup and its remaining emotional threads are concepts appearing in this artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work. Never is this more evident than in the stream of consciousness monologue that is matter-of-factly mused by the character at the center of the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s video work for The BREAKUP. Situated in a place where people can vocalize their inner thoughts free of others judgment, the artist reveals an aggressive denial that can often reveal itself, and be reveled in, at the beginnings of the non-relationship.

Benjamin Chadbond

Benjamin Chadbond is a Sydney-based photo-media artist and the founder and co-editor of an online photography magazine called, Try Hard Magazine. He is currently completing the honors portion of the Bachelor of Design in Photography and Situated Media program at The University of Technology, Sydney.

As a way of interrogating the past the artist explores liminal and transitional space that exist between and after romantic relationships. For this exhibition the artist presents a series of staged and un-staged, found and crafted images that draw heavily upon notions of desire, nostalgia, sentimentality and melancholia.

At its core, these works exists for the artist as an attempt to comprehend the effect that failed relationships, or more directly, failed love can have.

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Cooper Michael

Cooper Michael is an Australian contemporary artist with a conceptual inquiry, in which focuses upon the banal, value and desire. The multidisciplinary artist explores these ideas by juxtaposing, preserving, and adding value to objects and images; as to disrupt, adjust and augment the readymade of its ontology.

This ontological shift and liberation is key in how the artist deals with the readymade within his practice.

The work presented by this artist recognizes attitudes and needs within individuals to be consumed by, and hidden within a larger social collective.

The images the artist presents are those that, if removed from the gallery environment, would result in activity. Instead, action is stilted, and the hidden desired they solicit are emanated.

Clare Powell

Clare Powell is an emerging Sydney-based artist practicing within modes of video, performance, installation, photography and spoken word. Through her solo practice Powell is mainly driven by a left wing political stance, her identity as a queer female and personal explorations into the nature of pop-culture, new media and immersive environments.

Powell practices under various pseudonyms including Clare Tzara, CZRA and her actual name Clare Powell.

To move on, gain back self-esteem and deal with issues of love, distance, longing and fatal attraction are the core desires of the artist work for The BREAKUP. Traditional ideas of relationships are examined with a heavy does of satire as a way of exploring the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dissatisfaction with the idea of the traditional.

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Brenton Alexander Smith

Brenton Alexander Smith creates works that comment on society’s unending fascination with technology. His works often utilise outdated or obsolete technologies but may also incorporate video or performance.

An anti-utopian cyborg and human relationship is what Smith presents for The BREAKUP. In the work, two images of Elvis sing a duet of ‘Love Me Tender’ to each other. This image alone reveals a synthetic and narcissistic romantic imagery apparent in much pop music. The music is initially harmonious, but abruptly degrades into dissonance. There are two kinds of breakup occurring in this sequence. One is a simulation of a deteriorating human relationship between the two images of Elvis. The other is a technological breakdown, a failure of communication caused by a technical glitch.

Talia Smith

Talia Smith is an Auckland-based artist, writer and curator. In her practice she is drawn to areas of non-place, sites that perhaps at one point in time had a purpose but have since become redundant. Seeing a certain kind of poetry and romance in the ruins of human interaction she employs video, writing and photography to explore time gone by and the reminders of youth, of minutes, of hours.

Karaoke is a particularly clear reference in the artists work for this exhibition. For the exhibition, the artist replaces the cheesy and mostly non-descript imagery of tradition karaoke videos, replacing it with images of sites relating to non-place.

In doing so, the work reveals a kind of sentimentality towards sites that have long been abandoned.

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Lucy Zaroyko

Lucy Zaroyko is an emerging artist currently studying at the College of Fine Arts. Zaroyko uses painting and printmaking techniques to investigate notions of desire and escapism. Her work references the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;screenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; as a portal and its capacity to transport us to paradisiacal worlds.

For this exhibition the artist has tapped into a nostalgia influenced by nature, gaming and technology. Given the growing presences of screens mediated throughout contemporary life, the artist draws on memories created off both the ephemeral and tangible. The artist then creates expressive paintings pulling from the memories of these combined experiences. What is acknowledged is the comfort that is provided from place and memory, no matter how it is originally obtained.

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The Exhibition The BREAKUP 23 July – 27 July 2014 107 Projects Exhibition Curator: Luke Letourneau All artworks copyright © the Artists The Book The BREAKUP Edited by Luke Letourneau Texts copyright © the Authors Graphic design: Luke Letourneau

thebreakupexhibition.com.au

ISBN: 978 0 646 92435 9

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SYED FARAZ ALI/ ISABELLA ANDRONOS/ LAURA ANTHONY/ AMY BAMBACH/ BEN BARNES/ ANTON BENOIS/ LAUREN YVONNE BONNER/ JOHN BURNS/ BENJAMIN CHADBOND/ EMMA JENKINS/ PAUL KELAITA/ TONY KINGSTON/ LUKE LETOURNEAU/ COOPER MICHAEL/ BOO PATRICK/ CLARE POWELL/ BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH/ TALIA SMITH/ HANNAH STORY/ LUCY ZAROYKO

thebreakupexhibition.com.au 978 0 646 92435 9

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