Walkers
Thank you so much to everyone who came out to Not Sent Letters at VIVO on Saturday night. The documentation for the event is on both the Not Sent Letters blog and youtube I believe. Our piece Walkers had some technical challenges being documented and another version with inserts from the text projection will likely replace the one that’s up there.
It was such an intriguing process for me creating this piece with Leanne. The process mainly was built around and out of response. I can’t quite describe why it was a very different way of working for me (since I’ve built other platforms of response ), but it was. The piece will also be published in some format.
Malarky
Malarky, my novel, is now on Amazon sites (incl UK) for pre-order! I love the cover. She’s handsome. Click on the image to add it to your bookshelves.
Bunty biffs Bataille
I’ve begun working and collating material for my book for the Rereading the Riot Act project/series.
It’s going to involve a paste-up/collage form, and the curator I am working with gave me two books to look at for reference.
After I ploughed through them I felt a small burst of excitement because they reminded me so keenly of some reading material, some thinking before I realized no, it was not George Bataille’s Details, it was the Bunty for Girls Annual, which so absorbed me a child.
Rereading the Riot Act I
Rereading the Riot Act I. A public action I curated during my Unit/Pitt Residency. At Woodwards, intervention in front of Stan Douglas mural Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971. Two readings by Michael Barnholden & Penny Goldsmith (Walking Slow Helen Potrebenko) & 3 readings of the Riot Act, April 23, 2011. The second event, a Performance Art Cabaret, at The Waldorf took place the same night as the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot. A publication will appear in Autumn for this project, published by Publication Studio.
Parataxis thank you
Thank you to everyone who joined us last Sunday afternoon for the Parataxis event exploring Helen Potrebenko’s novel Taxi! in today’s city and interfacing the book with what was and what is. Thank you especially to the members of the public who “read shotgun” (open the book randomly and read passages) and to Helen who planned the route and talked to readers as we wandered. We were also blessed to have the collaboration, performance and generous support of Lori W (Mme Beespeaker) who concurrently documented the event at her blog.
I had a strange crisis before embarking on the event, which has given way to new/re-imaginings and invited input (some helpful, some less so). I set out perhaps to ask a few questions, one certainly was who authors remembering? Another was: what am I prepared to do for this book? I did not factor that one needs “permission” to revisit repeatedly. I had not considered that a repeated revisit might invite an assumptive yawn. But then it’s always easier for people to yawn, dismiss than engage.
The actual experience of repeatedly visiting a text like Taxi! (through different interventions) is quite the contrary. Each time we engage with this book it delivers new delights, reflections and questions, not least because of its fragmentary form. Again, a reflection of the working day, the working shift, the working life and this particular city, where the tea does not sit inside the pot for long.
The 11 people who joined us last Sunday engaged with the text in such a committed, enthusiastic and detailed manner which resulted in whole new considerations, especially about the present day.
Malarky
I am very happy to have been invited to give the first public reading ever from my novel Malarky to the Irish Women’s Network of BC this Sunday. They are a mighty group of women!
Malarky will be published next Spring (2012) by Biblioasis.
Venus with Biceps: David L Chapman & Patricia Vertinsky
Venus with Biceps: A Pictorial History of Muscular Women by David L. Chapman & Patricia Vertinsky
Arsenal Pulp Press, $29.95, 359 pages
Got muscles? Expect scrutiny if you’re female. Venus with Biceps interrogates the history and taboos of female muscularity and pairs a taut consideration with a diligent pictorial unearthing.
This welcome book is interspersed with chapters outlining the limited perceptions placed on women’s bodies and how they have progressed, regressed and progressed again. David L. Chapman, who culled and amassed more than 200 images for this book, unveils a riveting history of strongwomen with roots in theatricality, athleticism, performance, ancient Greece and exhibitionism.
The images come in varied sources and forms: photos, advertisements, illustrations, comics, posters and even cigarette cards, up until the 1980s. We can understand plenty from these rare images, including what informs the continuing relentless scrutiny of women’s bodies today (a scrutiny that increasingly extends to expectations even of the pregnant body).
There have always been ardent opinions on the female form that often bore little relation to biology or the potential women have for developing strong musculature.
The obvious development of muscle -a sign of male power -in women was considered a masculinization of the female body. It is still subject to critique and reactions of fear and disgust in the mainstream celeb-obsessed media. As the art critic and novelist John Berger wrote in Ways of Seeing, “Men are expected to act, women to appear.”
At the start of the 20th century the first strongwomen appeared on the fete, carnival and circus scene. They were viewed with freak-show bemusement by an audience of men seeking titillation. Curiously, there was often a family link to strongwomen; she might be the daughter of a strongman or in the case of Melina, the wife of strongman Louis Cyr. Athleta, a Belgian strongwoman known for lifting half a dozen men and a large barbell, had three daughters who were all raised to be strongwomen.
A shift began in the 1920s that saw a change in attitudes toward embracing a new model of “able-bodied womanhood.”
Victorian prudery was out; the flapper was in. There was more evidence in photos of displaying muscles in contrast to earlier attempts to disguise them, with the hourglass figure upheld as the ideal.
The Great Depression of the 1930s sent attitudes spiralling backwards towards “traditional expectations” and “womanly allure”, although a “lightly muscled body could be considered attractive.”
Emphasis on the female body distinctly changed after and during times of war. Women were required to participate in physical labour and that participation was recognized as vital. The attitude was that women needed to be fit and strong in order to serve their country and the war effort. The 1940s saw the advent of Wonder Woman and role models such as Rosie the Riveter, who personified working women. Towards the end of the 1940s, female athletes also saw more respect for their ability and physique.
Between the 1950s and 1970s, all the progress was essentially lost and muscular women appeared to vanish. Then, in 1977, the first bodybuilding competition that judged women’s muscles -not their beauty -took place at the YMCA in Canton, Ohio.
David L. Chapman and Patricia Vertinsky are to be admired for this excavation and excising of these visual records and stories from obscurity. This is a reading opportunity that can only be described as uplifting, informative and delicious. The book is not weighed down with an overly academic tone; the tone is one of consideration, historical context and fun insight. It does not purport to be an exacting record, but it is a delightful departure point for readers and enthusiasts and a reference to aid the constant inquiries those with mysteriously large calf muscles must engage with, in the experience of this former gymnast reviewer.
Biblioasis will be publishing Anakana Schofield’s novel Malarky next year.