some notes on napkins.

Visionaire / Comme des Garcons via  rifles @ tumblr

“…the female narcissist is dangerous to patriarchy because she obviates the desiring male subject (loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her desirability from him). in the case of an artistic practice that performs female narcissism (such as wilke’s), the threat lies in its making superfluous the arbiters of artistic value. already presuming her desirability, wilke obviates the modernist critical system; loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her artistic “value.” 

—	amelia jones, body art: performing the subject

“Those who subvert social norms are, ostensibly, people who have forgotten that they can be seen, publicly, at any time. Therefore, when they transgress social norms—by expressing physical affection for a person not visibly coded as the opposite sex, for example, or by being fat and rejecting social and bodily invisibility—they need to be reminded of this omniscient social gaze, and in the absence of institutional discipline, must be punished so they do not transgress again. This is the mechanism by which a dude who sees me in a vividly-colored dress, walking alone as though I either don’t know or don’t care that I am defying bodily norms, feels compelled to scream “UGLY FAT BITCH” at me. He is applying social discipline and teaching me a lesson: Everyone can see you, and your body and/or behavior are unacceptable.”

—	So Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham walk into an elementary school cafeteria*

Cindy Sherman Untitled #479, 1975

I have been very very happy lately, friends and parties and Beyonce do that to a person. That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking critically though... and thinking critically makes me feel sad in kind of a detached way. I wrote this the other night on my tumblr, and I collected all of these things on Tumblr too, but I need the conciseness of a blog post with all of them together to understand what I want from art / critique / myself. Anyway, here goes.

I want ridiculousness in fashion. I want ugly. I want destruction, I want imperfection, flaws, ripped seams, extra armholes, mutated glory that when people walk by me they whisper that they just don’t get it. I want to confuse you. I don’t want timelessness. I want everything, right here, right now, no regard for looking regal or rich or calm and collected. Why do I have to be classy anyway? Why do I need to impress you? When I slip on something I love I’m not doing it for you, I am doing it to feel good about myself, I am doing it to be transported into a place in my mind where I am safe and powerful and the cracks in my existence are filled with gold and diamonds and chocolate and goodness. I want to be able to change what I’m wearing mid walk — flip my jacket inside out, upside down, endless options, I want to tear apart what I’m wearing and what I represent and build back up again. I want you to have to think about what I represent, the space I take up. I want you running scared because you don’t understand and I don’t want you to. Every fucking seam of my jacket represents something you can’t have because I don’t want you to. 

This is mine. 

All mine.

 You can’t have it.