Gullible’s Travels: Universe V3.5

Last night I returned to the planet Digitanus, and I was a bigit with the implausible name Hlushbrimgual3-2. Upon searching my memory as I performed this alien individual, I found that my name was based on my sexuality. Since Digitanusites are actually a blend of animal and plant, their reproduction is based in part on a budding process that produces offspring, but requires three individuals to participate in a complex mating ritual that requires separate sexual acts over a period of time equivalent to 3 of our Earth years. I will not go into a precise description of those sexual behaviors, as that would amount to Digitanusian pornography and is therefore inappropriate to this journal. However, I bring up the mating process because my Digitanus name, Hlushbrimgual3-2, is based on it. I am the result of the mating of 3 plants and 2 animals. The plants were of the Hlush variety, and the two animals were respectively of the brim and gual species.

In the dream, I was a member of the Hlush Field, a political party of extremely maniacal bigits. The Hlush Field is a semi-secret religious organization of bigits of the Hlush/brim/gual variety that believes its members are above the usual moral and legal standards of Digitanus. Most of its members are in government, and all subscribe to a religious dogmatism that places them at the center of the universe, and free of any restrictions their religion would place on mere tripatium or quadigit, or even on other bigits. Hlushbrimgual3-2 was actually the bigit who proposed the Hlush Field leak a statement through an untraceable intermediary that claimed their King was an interloper from another universe (V3.6).

In my dream I (Hlushbrimgual3-2) was engaged in an illegal sex act with a plant of the vergitatum variety. While thus engaged, I / he / it was also thinking about how I was going to get more digim (money) from the Procreation Care Insurance Companies so I could buy a new mud swamp castle in the luxury resort of Hrulprathul, a lush tropical paradise in the southern hemisphere of Digitanus. I can’t begin to describe what the sexual act was like, as the sights, sounds, smells and sensations were totally alien to me. However, I (John of Earth) - while intrigued though quite put off by who I was and what I was doing on Digitanus - woke up in a sweat, shaking, and with a queasy stomach.

Ramblings About Slava Mogutin, Brian Kenny, and Superm: Part II

I'm back to art, specifically gay male art, and this is the second entry about my two favorite gay bad boi artists.

As I look at Slava Mogutin’s and Brian Kenny’s works individually and as Superm, I am aware of a move to define what it is to be anti establishment, intellectual, anti-intellectual establishment, young, gay, and male, and to react to the commodified image of the modern gay male.*1 Do they wish to change that image? I know they’re angry- though I’m not sure that the anger is directed against this commodified gay male image. Instead, they seem to glory in their anger. Other times, they hate it, and obsess about it. I wonder if the idea is to be themselves, when possible apart from such a cultural entity or at least to stand beside it and watch it, to trash it and themselves, to bash it with sex, drugs, pain, pleasure, and ideas. In photographs of the two they appear to be mocking their own anger – their punk image.

*2
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Brian Kenny draws the male physique. So is he about the male physique?
*3

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Sometimes these guy’s artwork, their blogs, journals, writing seems to glory in the male physique, pornographic and otherwise.

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Additionally Mogutin’s, Kenny’s and Superm artworks are not about the gay male body versus something else. The artwork is not an opposition to gay male art about the male physique. Instead the artwork is about the gay male artist’s interactions with the world around them including the political, social and the gay male obsession with the male physique. In fact, they may be reacting to a cultural perception of such. So, their work is not a Western binary thing. At times, I see a wish to separate themselves from any a priori assumption about what it is to be gay and male.

*4

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Love. What is that? Is it a cultural myth, a commodified, mangled and destroyed, impossible thing? Philosophically speaking, these guys think so, and to an extent they may be correct. Certainly I see a Hollywood version of the small town love connection, on the Hallmark Channel, and most of my gay male friends, if not coupled, busily look for their knight in shinning armor to ride in on that figurative white horse. However, photos of Slava and Brian together clearly demonstrate that they are a couple, and that they are happy together.
*5
Superm Collages reminiscent of David Wajnarwicz – look like Brian Kenny’s work.
*6
I’m blithering. Yes. Perhaps it is because this entire notion of a “gay male body” is such a complicated thing in the first place. Also, the idea that “Gay Male Art,” must be about the male physique is an absurd cultural notion based on the admitted gay male obsession with the male physique. So what! Is such an obsession any different from the heterosexual male obsession with and objectification of the female form? I think not.

So, after the above ramble, I’ve come to the most basic of conclusions that I like the artwork of Mogutin, Kenny, and Superm, and that it has a tangential relationship to my dithering. Also, the ramble has as much or more to do with my own quest concerning gay male art, physique, and body as it has to do with this fascinating, hot (and they know it) artist couple and their offspring, Superm.


Sources include:

1. Michele Foucault, Discipline and Punish. Paris, Gallimard, 1977
2. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated and edited by H. M. Parshley. New York: Knopf, 1953.
3. Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985.
4. “Superm,” Widipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUPERM. Viewed Thursday, viewed August 13, 2009 at 9:43 AM EDT. last modified June 23, 2009 at 3:15 GT.
5. Slava Mogutin’s Blog, https://www.blogger.com/blogin.g?blogspotURL=http%3A%2F%2Fslavamogutin.blogspot.com%2F, Viewed Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 8:35 A.M. EDT.
6. Travel Pick: Art and Archaeology in United States: The Male Gaze, at Culture Kiosk, TRAVEL CALENDAR, http://www.culturekiosque.com/travel/item11088.html, Viewed Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 9:45 A.M. EDT
7. Brian Kenny’s Blog, http://briankenny.blogspot.com/. Viewed Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 10:00 A.M. EDT.
8. *1 - Google Search Webpage - "commodified image of the modern gay male" Viewed 10:04 A.M., EDT, Sunday, August 23, 2009. I've included this page because there are several interesting locations including the following. First, My own Blog entry about the "Commodified Blog. Second, The pdf file "...defining the Metrosexual as a high-end consumer derived from..." includes the words "commodifying Queer." Third, "Pressing the Flesh: Sex, Body Image and the Gay Male, a doctoral dissertation project by Dr. Marcus Bunyan.


Images

*2 Slava and Brian - Received in E-mail from Slava Mogutin, dated August 20, 2009.

*3 Brian Kenny, "Close Paint Yourself off a Short Pier," Brian Kenny at Blogspot, http://briankenny.blogspot.com/. Viewed August 17, 2009 at 10:14 A.M. EDT.

*4 "Sputnik 3 Paintings," (with Gio Black Peter)Galleri, s.e.,Bergen, Norway, April 2008, Installation Overview. Viewed 10:51 A.M., EDT, August 23, 2009.

*5 Slava and Brian - From Slava Mogutin's Blog (I think) viewed 10:18 A.M., EDT, August 20, 2009.

*6 "Unruly Pigs" - Superm Collage from Slava Mogutin Website, http://www.slavamogutin.com/. Viewed August 17, 2009 at 9:39 A.M., EDT.

Ramblings About Slava Mogutin, Brian Kenny, and Superm

I'm back to art, specifically gay male art, and this entry has expanded exponentially during the past five days. So, it will be made in two installments.

Found Mogutin (1974) through culturekiosque. Mogutin and Kenny are part of a punk-gay-bad-boi’s-underground, except that they and friends do multimedia worldwide. So, it’s an international gay bad boi’s underground that has sponsors including international festivals, museums and other patrons. Mogutin works with German born American Artist (Armed Services Brat) Brian Kenny (1982) in a collaboration they call Superm. They also collaborate more and more with many other artists of the same genre. So this is all about the young gay male body in the first decade of the 21st Century.
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Slava Mogutin was kicked out of Russia at age 21 because of his gay / queer writing and activism against the establishment, and according to one source he hates establishment gays in this country (ouch!). Early artwork was photography.


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First, the notion of the body comes by way of Michel Foucault via the Feminist movement (Simon de Beauvoir , Luce Irigaray and so many others it is impossible to cover them here). Sufice it to say that it involves a conceptualization of the body, which is not owned by the individual. Rather it is an outside creation based in the culture(s) in which individuals find themselves. So, what is the young gay male body? It is not the gay male physique though that is one component. In fact, the gay male body fascism that surrounds us has forced on us all, a concept of gay male physicality that is ubiquitous and out of reach for most of us. The phrase “gay male body” presupposes a cultural formation, an abstract of gay maleness in the world sort of like the modern conceptualization of “mankind,” except that the gay male body has been commodified and, of course “mankind” is so much broader as to almost defy the comparison (h-m-m-m-m-m!). We see evidence of the gay male abstract simulacrum in our diurnal existence. For instance, the idea that the five gay men in Queer Eye have something to teach the heterosexual male about how he should be living in the world is one small piece of it. Queer Eye is also evidence of the assumption that there is such a thing as a gay male aesthetic that includes the male body in general, and that aesthetic is also commodified. It is based in a conjecture that the individual gay male performs his identity through the acquisition and use of mass manufactured things, and it assumes the commodification of the male body itself.
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Slava Mogutin and Brian Kenny glory in a late 1970’s to early 1980’s Raunchy New York City gay male scene, a notion of gay maleness that included Robert Mappplethorpe and is all but dead in the Twenty-first Century. I see no mention of AIDS, only an exaltation of testosterone, chemicals, body fluids, sex and burning the candle at both ends. I confess that I find the installations they create fascinating, if frightening, which would probably please them.
*2

to be continued


Sources include

1. Michele Foucault, Discipline and Punish. Paris, Gallimard, 1977
2. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated and edited by H. M. Parshley. New York: Knopf, 1953.
3. Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985.
4. “Superm,” Widipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUPERM. Viewed Thursday, viewed August 13, 2009 at 9:43 AM EDT. last modified June 23, 2009 at 3:15 GT.
5. Slava Mogutin’s Blog, https://www.blogger.com/blogin.g?blogspotURL=http%3A%2F%2Fslavamogutin.blogspot.com%2F, Viewed Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 8:35 A.M. EDT.
6. Travel Pick: Art and Archaeology in United States: The Male Gaze, at Culture Kiosk, TRAVEL CALENDAR, http://www.culturekiosque.com/travel/item11088.html. Viewed Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 9:45 A.M. EDT.
7. Brian Kenny’s Blog, http://briankenny.blogspot.com/. Viewed Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 10:00 A.M. EDT.

Notes on Images

*1 Black Pipe (Raoul), Hamburg, 2001, Slava Mogutin, http://www.slavamogutin.com/no_love/index.htm. Viewed 8:00 A.M. EDT, Monday, August 17, 2009.

*2 Imperial Powers, Berlin, 2007, Superm, http://www.slavamogutin.com/no_love/index.htm. Viewed 8:10 A.M. EDT, Monday, August 17, 2009.

Middle aged white Republican Pundit, Senators, healthcare insurance company owners / CEO's, and right wing nuts LIE!

In my last journal entry I might have added the 3 words "middle aged white" in front of the word "Republican" in the black, green, and red image. The escalating fear and anger the Insurance Companies' and others' (WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER) lies generate will lead to folks being hurt, or worse. And beneath it all lies an ugly undercurrent of racism.

We must get the message out to everyone to do a reality check, NOW! The best way to do that is to use the link to the Website in the title to this entry, "healthreform.gov."

I have to believe that most Americans are still rational people!

Health Care Reform and the Right Wing Nuts

After following the news the past two weeks, I’ve decided that the alternate universe of Digitanus is a far better universe than ours. The crazed and prejudiced Republican BIRTHERS and healthcare industry sponsored DEATHERS seem to be winning against both Obama and Healthcare Reform in our universe. Many of the DEATHERS are seniors on Medicare, though they don’t seem to understand they are already participating in one of two government socialist health care programs, Medicare and Veterans Health Administration. It appears that the quadigits, tripatiums, and most of the bigits on Digitanus are able to separate fact from fiction far better than we, the white, black, yellow and brown Earth folk of Universe V1.0.

I had dinner this week with two gay male friends, partners for many years who think Obama is Satan (It takes all kinds), and believe all the rest of the Right-Wing-Nut idiocy. I left that dinner truly horrified by the maniacal outbursts including “Obama and those people are destroying our nation.”

If you’re a Republican Pundit, healthcare insurance company owner/CEO, or right wing nut...
Say something stupid and idiotic; often and loud enough and all the gullible people will believe it! Like, Oh let’s see now.

1. Sotomayor’s a Latina racist.
2. Healthcare reform will kill old people.
3. Obama wants to kill old people.
4. Obama is a Nazi
5. Democratic Congress Persons are Socialists.

The subliminal message –“They're all outsiders who want to hurt us - KILL THEM!

This stuff is truly frightening!

I promise I'll get back to Art and/or LGBT Art related stuff next entry, HONEST!

Today's Lies Are Tomorrow's Truths

Different But Familiar

I’ve made contact with another universe, V3.5, the world of Digitanus. I make no special claims as to my mentalist or psychic abilities. I can’t guess the contents of an opponent’s hand of cards except through the use of logic. I’ve never been able to divine the location of water beneath the soil, nor predict the future. However, I do seem suddenly to be reading the minds of creatures other than human. I don’t read their thoughts in words, not English or any language. Instead the thoughts materialize complete while I sleep, prepackaged, pill-like, they expand and elaborate until I know the sight, sound, taste, and smell of a place that is totally alien, yet not so different from our own.

Why V3.5?

I’ve taken to a peculiar method of labeling the Digitanus universe as V3.5. That method is based on the computer age delineation of various prepackaged software versions using a decimal system. For instance, I work with MAC systems V10.4.11, and the labeling is based on the certain knowledge that comes with my expanding visions of Digitanus’ exact location. If we begin with a human centered vision of all time and space and call our own universe V1.0, the universe in which Digitanus and its people exist is exactly 25 variations away from our own, thus V3.5.

Prejudice and Lies

In my last journal entryI described the Digitanus Universe, V3.5 briefly and deceitfully as a parable about our own place and time. I will report on Digitanus occasionally in the future because the universe of Digitanus seems to have special bearing on our own. The inhabitants thereof seem to be, if not carbon copies of our own people, similar to the point of caricature. For instance, in the attempt to discredit their quadigit king, one faction of bigits has even invented and manufactured down to the last detail an inter-universe traveling machine with which said king has supposedly traveled to the Digitanus Universe with the express goal of killing off aged bigits through his proposed universal healthcare system.*

The bigits have the following bizarre (to my way of thinking) motto,

“Today’s lies are tomorrow’s truth.”

*Use the link to go to the last journal entry to read about the social structure of universe V3.5.