on genitalia

INTRODUCTION

Where does the imagination lie? Through which modus can one most effectively engage the viewers’ imaginations? Because through this project, this is what I attempt; to break through a certain complacency towards a subject we have decided is fixed and unmoveable. Genitals; an area one might not even consider as up for debate or subject to change. My tool for this attempted paradigm shift is language. But the real process unfolds after, or beyond it; the words should settle in your mind and pave new ways of imagination. Because what’s strongest about any medium we employ artistically is its ability to create a third meaning ; it creates space for views that are self-contradicting, new, cloudy. The indirect is where its (the mediums’) power lies. As the language that I use enters into the vague, it is achieving what I set out to do; allowing something other to emerge.

“IN THE FUTURE IT WILL BE NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL
GIRLS FROM BOYS, EVEN IN BED”

Focussing on genitals as the physical manifestation of sex could be seen as a very derivative and essentialist approach. But I argue that by turning back to the physical in the post-gender world we are inhabiting, turning back and delving deeper into it, taking it more seriously than before (‘more faithful as blasphemy is faithful’ Haraway) we can turn essentialist rhetoric back onto itself, causing it to collapse. Embracing the physical and then opening it up as malleable removes the necessity to follow the evolution of gender theory as something cerebral and theoretical. Using text as my main medium may feel counterintuitive then, but the part I wish to activate is a different kind of thought; the associative and undefined.

It is disputable if what I advocate for is a physical transformation or a thought experiment; that is up to the viewer to decide. But I do propose to lessen the 19th century divide between body & Mind, to see our own bodies as something that is constantly changed by our mind and thus are sensory experiences as something we can amplify at our own will. The physical extension of our body is a realistic possibility, being able to stretch over oceans or feel every smallest sensation on the table as your own is a matter of determination and, most of all, imagination.

“The body is already the crossroads of multiple intensities; we have as
many organs as desire can produce” Preciado

WHAT IS IT? (THE PROPOSITION)

Genitals coming in and out of focus

1. Every part of your body is a possible field of sexual play
2. Do not use your genitals the way they were ‘intended’
3. Instead deconstruct and rebuild them (could it have antennae? Could you split it? What would it feel like if it was ten times bigger? Maybe it’s purely decorative. Maybe it’s controlled by telepathy)
4. Find new ways to approach this Frankenstein’s monster you have created (does it even like touch at all?) and internalize the extension
5. Remove all hope of achieving an end goal and try to make the most of it

Touch the world around you with invisible limbs

USE OF LANGUAGE

It felt logical to not only explore possible shapes of genitals, but also the language we use to describe them. Often in language we ascribe values, just by connotation, and thereby stunt any deviations. Language used around sex and genitals often hints at the persons dominance or subordinance and is mainly used to reassert, respectively, masculinity or femininity.
Hereby a list of alternatives, insofar they speak to you (the new is a combination of a adjective and a noun, completely interchangeable):

OLD
hard
soft
dominant
submissive
yielding
giving
receiving
erect
top
bottom
penetrating
big
small

NEW
emerging earthquake
overflowing shape
titillating bridge
electric all-one
awakening divide
pouring burn
sparkling never-end
dissolving flight
imagining foundation
colourful switch
instigating ponytail
diving bellybutton
gasping give-take
reaching teardrop
transparent nest
entangled field

Modifying language seems to be trickier than modifying shapes, mainly because for something to have meaning it has to be utilized. Too easily I fell into the caveat of using language that is too vague, thereby not even evoking associations with the reader. The balance I sought was put in words perfectly by a text by Butler in which she argues we should use words already familiar but subvert them in order to dislocate common dynamics. In my initial research, I was irked by the fact I could only use the word ‘genitalia’. The reason being that it uses a base I do not agree with; from the Latin ‘generare’- to procreate, to breed. Everything I argue for is completely useless, fruitless one could say, and my premise is not viewing procreation as the main goal of sex. In my attempt to modify this, I began to look for Latin words (because they give gravity and feign legitimacy) that would come closer to my objective. The word I came up with was ‘effusalia’ from the Latin ‘to pour forth’. This word seemed to be loose from production or reproduction and more directed towards reciprocity and not constricted by gender norms and expectations. Only upon reading the above mentioned Butler text did I realize the futility of looking for something with a more ideologically sound base; the word ‘effusalia’ doesn’t invoke anything, except maybe some rare disease. I still haven’t found a word that would displace in the extent I would want it to, so I could follow Preciado’s lead and just call everything a dildo. For this text, I use genitals/ genitalia, just so we’re all on the same page.

MIND – BODY?

The biological always seems like something to run away from, as a less enlightened version compared to our constructivist understanding of sexuality and gender. Our ideals are more perfect and correct than the bodies that shape them. In thought we experiment with shifting futures, why not with our bodies too? My overflowing vision of mutating and expanding genitals stemmed from the delight I experienced at envisioning body extensions and permutations, much like Haraway explains in ‘A cyborg manifesto’. The idea that we can modify ourselves without the teleological objective of imitation or improvement is very liberating. The body is not something holding us back, inferior to the endless landscapes of mind, but also a playground, also a place of expanding. Something is simply wonderful in the idea of all the possibilities, of how open we can be if we allow it ourselves.

TWO SIDES OF THE BRIDGE

Side one: DISSECTION AND ARTEFACTS

Categorizing and dissecting has long been a practice used to assert certain ideals and deny the Others’ reality. When presented with this assortment of genitals, not as wholes, but as malleable parts, the same aesthetic is invoked, a biological examination. A far memory (only far) of subjecting intersex people to dehumanizing practices of research, in which intersex people are seen only for their parts. But in my assembly, something else emerges .This is not only an investigation, but it is an exercise. These parts aren’t only something to look at from afar, but something to experience, to touch, to experiment with.

Hereby I ask; when does something transform from object to reality? object being here something detached, something that can be seen from a distance, and reality being a lived daily experience, a pragmatic tool. I wonder, and maybe suggest, that shifting from passive to active is what is necessary in order to stop ourselves from othering and instead incorporating a different reality into our own. the idea is fascinating that , for instance, a person used a comb every day of the week, at a certain point stopped, and later it is shown in a museum in order to demonstrate a time passed. when does this fall from reality and into objecthood occur? and how can we stop ourselves from looking at things as only part of an aesthetic, as something to be dissected, as something incongruent to our own reality?

In Momo, a children’s book by Michael Ende, the protagonist, a little girl, lives in an amphitheatre. She uses old artefacts as household objects, returning them to their original intent. On one hand, it seems like blasphemy, on the other it is the truest form of respect; not putting on a pedestal but incorporating into the everyday.

I present my suggestions for alternate genitals less as objects to be looked at, and more as an extension to be used. I hope that the assembly invokes more than just the memory of the medical past. Because of their diversity, the objects don’t speak of one ideal genital, but allow permutations. Some of them can be placed in the heterocis spectrum and are recognizable, but only at first glance. They all look familiar, but when you come closer, they don’t adhere to any normative physicality, and hopefully they confuse.

Side two: THE NECESSITY OF AN EXTENSION

When do we see an extension as a part of ourselves? Do we try to create something to fit, to try to bridge the gap between our own bodies and the abject object? I propose that this assimilation isn’t necessary. The text that opened my mind to this possibility, and also in the end shaped a lot of my thoughts on this project is ‘Countersexual Manifesto’ by Paul B. Preciado. In a certain chapter, he gives examples of the practice he calls ‘dildotectonics’. The dildo is his main theoretical and practical instrument; he doesn’t view it as a failed copy of a phallus, but instead as a genderless tool to expand sensitivity. The exercise I refer to is one in which a dildo is drawn on a persons forearm, and the arm is stroked for an exact amount of time. The boundary pushing part of this practice is that simply a drawn form is enough to arouse sexual stimulation, despite the arm not having any of the sensory nerves we would associate with such an act. This made me believe that the mental appropriation of an extension (or even the idea of the extension) is enough to open up the body to new sensations. Ultimately it is my goal make this practice, not specifically the exercise above, but its premise, a more common and valid way of using the body.
This realization also changed my objective of this project. In the beginning I saw the physical extensions as the key part, but now I use them only as aids to tickle the viewers thoughts, hopefully these forms growing further in their own reality.

“Transforming any body into a possible pleasure centre defers the origin, troubles the centre” Preciado