The Dirty Show
The Dirty Show I believe it is important to make the curatorial process transparent. This is how I curated THE DIRTY SHOW. I stated my belief in both Nepotism and Community Involvement. I solicited participation by NAC members in a video and performance project about sex and spirituality. I allowed late submissions to The Dirty Show (50 works submitted). I used an initial “1 to 5” scale to evaluate each work. I grouped the 4-5 works as the strongest and immediately “in” and then discussed shared concerns/topics presented in the works with Steve and Hayden. I revisited the 3 works to see if they fit into the rigor/vigor of the already selected works. I re-visited all the 1-3 works not selected for a final go-round to see if something was missed. - Margaret Dragu
354 St. Paul Street St. Catharines, ON L2R 3N2 t 905-641-0331 f 905-641-4970 www.nac.org artists@nac.org
ISBN 0-9780375-2-9 Niagara Artists’ Centre (NAC) is an artist-run, charitably registered, collective formed by and dedicated to serving the working artists and the community of Niagara. Founded in 1969 the Niagara Artists’ Centre is proud of its history as one of the oldest and most respected artist collectives in Canada. Best known for experiential, satirical, witty and socially provocative exhibitions and performances, NAC, in fact, embraces the entire realm of contemporary art.
NAC gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of St. Catharines, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Niagara Community Foundation and the Delta Bingo Players.
The Dirty Show On behalf of the members of NAC, welcome to our collective home. Please kick off your shoes, lounge about and stay a while. Coffee, tea or me? And while the tea is steeping and you settle into your chair, a little about the art work that surrounds you. The work in this show is all by NAC members. It was arranged and selected by guest curator Margaret Dragu of Richmond BC. Margaret is an internationally respected performance artist who has been involved in artist-run culture in Canada for almost forty years. She is also a self-admitted sexual/cultural analyst. Margaret diligently examined and responded to over fifty submissions to this NAC member group show, discussing them with Hayden Booth and me. From these selections emerged an exhibition that strives to bring sex off the streets and back into the home, into our “Whonzimmer”, our living room, for fun, for discussion and to stimulate the intellect as well as the libido. Insulated as we are in the comfortable rooms of our homes, it is difficult to recognize with certitude the world in which we live, a world at war. And as a people, it’s harder yet to reconcile ourselves to the idea that we are clearly on a side, and that our lifestyle is adorned with the spoils of often bloody and merciless conflict. Responding to Canada’s new military profile in Afghanistan, the feature of this exhibition is Margaret’s performance, Pillowbook inspired by John and Yoko’s famous bed-in for peace of May 1969. Margaret solicited the NAC membership for couples and singles interested in sharing their bed for a discussion of sexuality, spirituality and the psychology of change. The video footage of these encounters was incorporated in Pillowbook. It is an original work of and for the Niagara community. This exhibition has truly been a collective effort, and I credit Margaret and our members for being able to realize it. We hope your stay is pleasurable and that you savour your surroundings like you might the warmth of the sun on your cheeks when the weather changes for better. It’s spring! I’m feeling it, are you feeling it? - Stephen Remus Director
Curatorial Statement for
The Dirty Show Every person believes he/she is an expert about art. An expert about sex. About sexual representation. Erotica and pornography. And censorship. We all firmly believe that we KNOW. The Every(wo)man saying, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” believes he/she really and truly KNOWS what art is; art looks good above the sofa. Cultural-studies artists/students quoting from Lacan-Foucault-Barthes-‘Sexe et Po’ Femme-French-Lit-Deconstructionists believe they are the ones who actually KNOW; art is created by rigorous discourse. Politicians, the judiciary, church leaders, school teachers, activists, the Liquor Board and even the Fire Marshal all believe they are the ones who, in fact, really KNOW. About art. About sex. By accepting Stephen Remus’s invitation to curate, contextualize and provide parameters for THE NAC DIRTY SHOW, am I, in fact, naming myself as the expert? And why did NAC invite me, anyways? Sitting in front of my computer in a fishing village on the south arm of the Fraser River, I assumed this honour was because I’m an older artist, stripper, activist, feminist, writer, and mother experienced with the political/cultural/legal issues around sexual representation in art and in the community. I also thought that it might be a big plus that I live very very very far away from St. Catharines. [Yeah, yeah, you never heard of me. Trust me. I am famous. Really. So famous that Artistic Director Todd Janes (Edmonton’s Gallery Latitude 53) calls me Brittany Spears.
In fact, try googling me and see how quickly you arrive at a thousand German porn sites and a Romanian anime series about a vampire-Shakespeare character called Dragu-Slayer to which neither I have the remotest connection. Natch.] Turns out the invite was not given to me because I am a famous artist. It was sheer nepotism. Of which I am a huge fan, bye-the-bye. It is the good/bad thang of artist-run centres and arms-length funding. Both of which I shall …. “fight on the beaches… fight on the landing grounds… fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!” as Churchill said about Dunkirk in House of Commons June 4, 1940. So what am I bringing to the curation of NAC artists’ Dirty Show? How do I want to discuss sex and art with this community within a community? I am bringing 35 years of making art. Art that is made from the body (always) and investigates sexuality (often) and is about creating community, transcendence, and power which is also a part of sexuality. I am also a survivor of 35 years of conflict around these issues. Conflicts fought in public, in the media, in court cases, in art/feminist/theatre/activist communities, in the art market, the farmers’ market and on the streets where I live. I am a survivor of what Ariel Levy in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture describes as the “unresolved conflicts from 30 years ago between women’s liberation movement and the sexual revolution …” And after 30 years, it is not surprising we are asking the same questions. Questions that are so polarized as to feel unresolvable. Like what is the difference between Pornography and Erotica, how do we develop and/or enforce community standards about sexual representation in public and private, is censorship good/bad or avoidable, how do we protect children (as well as women and men) from exploitation, is everything just getting worse and worse and worse or is this a skewed or unconscious vision of our history? What is the difference between Pornography and Erotica? I shall tell you.
One you like and one you don’t like. Erotica is something you like. Pornography is something you hate. There is a thin membrane between the two but most people are neither living at the membrane nor are they creating/consuming at the membrane Most people really know what they like. It is living with a lack of ambiguity that encourages the belief that he/she is an expert and is an easy step to feel a necessity to judge/define/set standards for others. While having breakfast at Art’s with Sean …… and Stephen Remus, Sean asked, “Who is setting this community standard or deciding what is interesting and acceptable for a so-called family newspaper or magazine?” This is a good question. And the answer always reflects the politics of our time which has taken a deep swerve to the right. This swerve feels subtle to those living and working far away from the membrane in the middle but feels like deep hot predatorial breath the closer one operates towards the membrane. Who is living and operating at the membrane? Artists, of course. And the transgendered, the intellectuals, the activists, the humanitarians and the usual crew. And oddly so are pornographers, advertising executives and even Hollywood. Why is this membrane spot so crowded? Because everyone (and we are each an expert) wants to have sex, talk about sex, explore sex, empower sex, exploit sex, employ sex, control sex, or even actively ignore sex. And often we want to control what others are doing/being/creating/thinking because it impacts us through public arenas (advertising, Hollywood, internet, television) and privately as our global village shrinks every day making our neighbours closer and closer. Their thoughts, beliefs, and actions are always escalating in their impact upon us. Sometimes we disapprove of ‘the other’s’ sexuality or what ‘the other’ is being/feeling/making causes us to be uncomfortable. Sometimes someone in the membrane is making money off of us. Or exploiting and enslaving us or someone we love. No wonder it is so challenging to talk about sex together without coming to blows. Our culture possesses so few words to describe and discuss sexuality (and the spirituality of sexuality). A paucity of words to share our feelings and experiences as sexual and spiritual human beings.
We are often left with the lexicon, nomenclature, and images from commercial sources like Hollywood, TV, and pornography -- unconsciously absorbing the values attached to these commercial sources. It is my very strong belief that it is individual artists who shall help us create a new sexual language. Visually. With words. With media. How can we passively accept that our language, humour, aesthetics, and morality is being created by the global economy -- or as I like to call it – Capitalism Gone Wild? In a speech given by Sally Tisdale (author of infamous pro-pornography book Talk Dirty to Me) at the Law and Literature Symposium, University of California-Berkeley, October 1, 1995, Tisdale says, “Art exists not so much outside social responsibility, but within it -- woven through it, through the social fabric, the political reality and the political vision, intermingled in and embroidered upon the daily life of culture in such a way that it can’t be held separate, imprisoned in a cage of changing values. In Oscar Wilde’s words, ‘Art never expresses anything but itself.’ Art must exist and cannot be contained, because art is that which humans must do. Art simply is.” I love art. And I love sex. I am extremely interested in the spirituality of sex, the passion of love, the psychology of change, the transcendence of sexual and spiritual acts, and the support and nurturing of our expression and growth as loving and sexual humans.
- Margaret Dragu March 2006
Searching for New Words for Sex and Love at Art’s Diner Tough, now, to remember which teacher in which elementary school in which grade in the north end of St. Catharines showed us clueless kids that peculiar (to us) documentary on Hollywood film-making. This was in the mid-1970s, well before video, when aluminum cans would be bust open, rickety projectors would be threaded, and we’d watch movies thrown up against a screen pulled down in front of the chalkboard. I distinctly recall George Roy Hill, the director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, explaining why he filmed some scenes through particulate clouds of Old West dust. A nude woman, he said, was much more alluring and desirable when her body was partially filtered through a veil than if she were to walk into camera-shot buck naked. The relationship between Butch and Sundance had more intensity and an unspoken bond when they buddied up behind the elements. Maybe I’m getting nostalgic in an age of explicit everything, but I have to agree with Hill. A bit of mystery is a good thing. It can work wonders with the libido. “There’s something really bawdy about this, and it’s incredibly beautiful,” remarked Margaret Dragu, inspecting a monochromatic triptych of hands and an it’s-up-to-you assortment of body parts. “They all feel like penetration, but maybe I’m bringing that to it, because they are abstract. Do you get penetration from this? Are you getting horny? I’m getting a little horny looking at these.” Damp thatch is definitely a litmus test for passing grades in The Dirty Show. Dragu, a fifty-twoyear-old ex-stripper who has an internationally recognized three-decade CV as a performance artist, is the curator and guest performer at the show, culled from nearly fifty submissions by members of the Niagara Artists’ Centre. The shared intent is to let it all hang out. In doing so, it’s obvious there’s a whole lot more to being dirty than fucking. There is fetish and foreplay, identity and mythology, for starters. Rather than being exposed to flocks of cocks and pussies galore, Dragu surveyed a back gallery increasingly crowded – entries were still trickling in Wednesday afternoon, just three days before the opening – with as much implicit as explicit. Sure, there were thrusting phallic machines, flaccid dicks, monumental boners, a disembodied hard-on violently showering the innards of a condom with come, Spongebob Squarepants giving it doggie-style, rippling labia, tits, tits, tits, and even a light-up clit. But a lot of the entries came into the gallery sideways: naïve dot-matrix nudes, ceramic dogs salivating Pavlov for their erotic mistress, blue satin in the panties drawer, a Disneyesque she-male centaur, Internet-video Paris Hilton sharing a canvas with a cycling Dragu, recontextualized chat-room sexual encounters, and
a peep show. Oh, and a rooster and a cat – whatever they mean. Resident of a small fishing village twenty minutes from Vancouver, Dragu has spent her visit to St. Catharines inviting new friends into bed, in the most John & Yoko sense, and looking into society’s changing sexuality in times of war. Getting dirty has also meant sinking fingers well into the muck of power and the (im)balance of human relationships. Over a late breakfast and bottomless cups of coffee at Art’s Diner, Dragu and NAC director Stephen Remus shared opinions on intimacy, conflict, community standards, the rise of political conservatism, pornography, feminism, attacks on intellectualism and, naturally, censorship. One of the first questions in putting up The Dirty Show is how to prepare or warn potential visitors of the R- and X-rated contents within. “Every time you put a sign up, you’re always framing everything within that sign,” Dragu advised Remus. “You may want to do that. But it’s so powerful: what you mean and what you think you mean, and what other people think you mean. So, I would think about it.” The short time leading up to The Dirty Show has been ill portent for sexual liberation, as red provinces turn to blue, and the red states just seem to be sniffing for blood. Suddenly, gay marriage is under renewed threat north of 49, abortion is pushed back into the alleys down south, and right here the local daily proudly proclaims itself a “family newspaper” of the opinion that the arts aren’t worthy of public funding. This could be a dispiriting time. That doesn’t mean we’re all beyond hope. “The community keeps surprising me with its strength,” Remus noted. “You have to kind of challenge it. It’s almost like an exercise, right? You’ve got to give it some chores to do to see if it can build muscle.” Of course, St. Catharines (nor any other destination on the globe) isn’t being challenged for the first time, and this isn’t the first NAC Dirty Show. This edition takes its name from the collective’s first Dirty Show, assembled at Rodman Hall in 1972. At that show, the fresh erection of Ray Woodworth’s sculpture “Masturbating Buttocks” was removed before the show ran its course. (“Masturbating Buttocks” later stood its ground in the 1994 retrospective Whirlpool/Watershed, a collection of NAC’s greatest hits from its first twenty-five years.) In 1976, NAC’s travelling box of dirty miniature art was configured as The Johnny Canuck Ego Exhibitionist, a portable assortment of pocket-sized passions. Some twenty years later, Johnny Canuck proved that size doesn’t matter when it comes to getting a rise out of men in uniform. In the late 1990s, as president of the NAC board, artist Carolyn Wren – who is represented in the current Dirty Show – was working in the gallery’s old digs on Bond
Street when the fire marshal stopped by for a building inspection. Eyeing the filthy compartments of the Ego Exhibitionist, the marshal took offense and threatened to have NAC shut down. Fortunately, it was all talk. Nothing ever happened. Dragu has heard the story, and she regards it with an appreciable degree of bemusement. “Everybody thinks they’re an expert in sex, and everybody thinks they’re an expert in art,” she said. “I would never say I know a lot about sports, although my daughter is a star athlete that has won a zillion awards. I still wouldn’t say I know a lot about sports. Why would I? I haven’t been schooled in sports…” “So, the fireman is actually saying: ‘I find this offensive. I want to close this down.’ Like, he’s an expert? His immediate sense of discomfort makes him able to protect everyone around him – without them asking him to protect them. He’s doing it pre-emptively. He believes it would be a good thing. He’s motivated, actually, in quite a good way; he could be a really nice guy. I’m sure he’s motivated by many good things, but he still has a strong lack of looking at sex and art in a concerted way. It’s very narrow.” For this Dirty Show, NAC’s gallery space is constructed so that clusters of work are displayed in what Dragu refers to as Wohnzimmer – German for “live room” or “living room”. Sex is pulled out of furtively attended home computers and darkened blocks of the street, and given a prominent place in the home. Remus pointed to the credo that the assembled works of The Dirty Show are not to be viewed passively. Dragu agreed: “Some people are very entrenched in the idea that art is only beauty, and art is only pleasure. And this is very challenging.” And in a world in which the punishing sex of hentai and bukkake are open season on the Internet, and the Dirty Sanchez is in the sneering lexicon of frat boys everywhere, there’s a lot of room for enlightenment, whether intellectual or just plain naughty. Remus commented that this week alone, in assembling the show, he learned about reverse cowgirl and Cleveland Steamers. A sense of humour and a heady relationship with irony are imperative in navigating through it all. And there’s the fine line between the numbing banality of porn and the wide-awake, invigorating charms of sensuality. “You like erotica; you don’t like pornography,” Dragu observed. “So, whatever it is you don’t like, that’s what you’ll call it. It’s going to be different for different people. And, you know, it’s everywhere, yes. Well, it’s not the fault of the technology. Everyone’s so upset that these young girls are doing these things, or older women, powerful women who are doing these things that appear to be contrary to where we were going to. And my kind of thing is that irony is OK. Irony is like knowledge.”
“Really young girls who are wearing fuck-me-I’m-a-slut with a little kind of Playboy bunny who don’t know what that means – well, that’s sad, and not funny. And I don’t have a clue what to do to stop it, but it’s just not interesting. Whereas, I know there are young women who call themselves post-feminist, who may be in their late twenties or early thirties, who might wear that with a real sense of irony. That’s funny, and that’s OK. And they would try to engage me and get my goat a bit about the post-feminist thing. They’re trying to define it in their own way, and reshape feminism and make history in a way that’s good. So, it’s OK.” Dragu named Annie Sprinkle as a pioneer of sorts in this very adult confluence of symbol and sex. Sprinkle arrived at the dawn of the 1970s as teenager ready to earn a living as a busty brunette porn actress. From the 1980s and up to today, she has turned to humour, floating topless through the Foto Funnies of National Lampoon magazine, to non-porn film, to a well-regarded career as performance artist and educator getting average American women in touch with the wonders of their own sexuality. Paths such as these aren’t forged trouble-free on some idealistic journey to nirvana. Forward movement entails the involvement of others, and both Dragu and Remus embrace the remedial powers of conflict, uncomfortable as that may be at the heat of the moment. “You can’t have intimacy without conflict. You’re going to have some conflict, right?” Dragu asked. “I grew up with some major conflict, some major public conflict, and I’d think: ‘Oh, conflict – it’s going to feel like that.’ It doesn’t actually have to be that big. It doesn’t have to be 2001, you know, with HAL.” Conflict is what throws up the new ideas, redresses and revises the old ones, and, one hopes, moves society forward with a burgeoning vitality, a clean honesty, a recognition of diversity, and a surrendering of cynicism to, dare it be said, love. And, to me, that’s The Dirty Show: It’s not simply about the pros and cons of primal lust or shock value in a conservative community; it’s a communiqué about love, where it’s lacking, where it’s needed and where it can flourish. Such communication isn’t just a drop in the bucket if it connects and provokes and radiates well beyond the confines of this gallery or any other venue of discourse. “It’s a shame that we don’t love it more, that we don’t talk about it better, still,” Dragu lamented. “It’s a million years old, and we still don’t have a basic language for talking about sex.” - Hayden Booth March 2006
The Dirty Show Guest Curator, Performance Artist Margaret Dragu NAC Member Visual Artists Tobey C. Anderson Edwin D. Burnett June-Etta Chenard Gustavo Cerquera Emily Colombo Antony Green Devon Grey Ernest Harris Jr. Lesley Finds Matt Harley Marinko Jareb Deanna Lynn Jones George Langbroek Downtown Clint Lown Melanie MacDonald Judy Marquis Andre Perusse Melissa Smith Thomas Craig Oliver Jeff Ott Carolyn Wren Tammy Ziegler