Gesture
I got done with my final meeting for photo project. At least before the exhibition on Monday. And my professor met because he read my “didactic,” and said, “this is too academic,” and I said, “alright,” and wrote one five minutes before our meeting. I showed it to him, saying, “I need to get things done, so make this fast.” He read my artist statement (“what is gay and how does it land in your body,” I wrote that I asked my photographic subjects…and later…”in the absence of an essentialist theory of sexuality…”) and the professor said it was very good. “You need an elevator speech,” he said. I replied, “that’s easy,” and then said, “it’s a project dealing with gesture as a fundamental, but not stable, marker of sexuality and identity. Sexual identity, here, is constructed.”
And my professor asked, “what’s the title?” and I said, “Gest/Post-ure” because it focuses on how our bodies shape the identities we have, plus it’s a bit of a nod to a certain form of academic terminology, and he said, “oh no I like this question you raise, that one phrase you used earlier, the thing having to do with bodies: oh, there it is, ‘how does that land in your body?’ That should be the title.” I replied, “well that’s sort of terminology you find everywhere…I feel like I’ve heard that phrase…inhabiting bodies, things landing in bodies, things in relationship to bodies…all over the place. It’s cliché,” and he said, “how does that land in your body” (no punctuation) should be your title, and I said, “I already got my title printed,” and he said, “oh never mind never mind, but that should be your subtitle,” and I thought “ick,” and he said, “because when you’re born, right when you’re born, the first thing you do is touch. Touch is the first thing that happens to babies–babies need their mother’s touch” and I thought, “is this the time for this I have to go reprint my artist statement because you said mine sounded like a term paper earlier so I want to go and do that,” and he kept going, “touch is the first thing babies learn, and a baby needs their mother’s touch,” and I thought, “COME ON,” and he said, “and then the baby learns language,” and I thought, “absolutely the fuck not,” and he kept going, “so that a baby learns slowly touch and language, and a baby is constantly learning the world around them. The baby touches, the baby speaks, and the baby learns from their mother. But these things, gestures, this thing you focus on, those aren’t either of those–gesture is something that isn’t speaking nor touching. So…we’re getting into soul territory here,” and I wanted to slam my laptop shut, although he hits on a good point about the ambiguity of gesture, between (in Agamben’s terms) action and signification–here, analogously, touch and speech–and Agamben deals where the “uninitiated” into the critical-theory cult might call “soul” or “freedom.” (This is all retroactive thought.) “And we’re in soul territory here,” and I said, “oh boy,” and he said, “there’s not enough time to get into the soul, but a person who’s different” (what my professor calls gay people) “expresses himself through these ways that are baked in, that he’s born with, that are natural to him,” and I thought, “this is everything my project goes against,” and finally, he said, “so what you really mean, when you say that a sexuality ‘lands in the body,’ is that somehow, before birth, a person’s identity is given to them, it becomes part of their body–what you mean to say is that, by landing in their body–a person, instead of having a sexuality landing in their body, is expressing their sexuality–you’re not showing landing in body, but what they’re expressing, which had to have landed in their body at some point, which is what you’re trying to get at through gesture,” and I thought, “I have to go,” and said, “that’s a long elevator ride,” and he said, “well you already have a speech because you’ve thought of this,” and I said, “yeah,” and I began to think.
I began to think in the car today. I thought my professor, whom I do not know if I will speak to again, made a fundamental, but very representative and understandable misunderstanding. He thought, as many people think, that sexuality, especially if there is a project dealing with sexuality, must be natural, it must be an individual’s fate. And if something is inalterable; if someone is born with a sexuality and cannot change it, then it must be ethical. There’s an apologetic to this sort of thinking. A progressive apologetic. And I thought, “oh,” because, well, I wish sexuality were a choice, I thought, as I drove, stick shift into fifth gear, pedal to the metal, to meet with Ben the barista for my coffee before a shoot today–the same Ben, who, years ago, when we barista’d together, told me gay people were mentally ill and should pray that away.
So I talked to Ben (who has since changed), pulling out Call Me By Your Name, and we talked about jobs, moving into cars, whether corporate life is worth it, and all of the things, and I told him about my exhibition.
Of course sexuality is no choice, I thought, except for the bis, pans, and fluids. But to present sexuality as a choice–as something someone would or would not choose–to present gay as a complex cultural construction, dealing with masculinity, and present these desires as if I had chosen them, and to choose to interact with them continually–waking up each day deciding that gay people are good and worth my time–is what sets gay and queer culture up not as a fate like a sickness, but as a world worth building. A world worth choosing. And as long as people are either on defense–needing to present sexuality as a fact of the world, unalterable, and therefore (somehow), worthy of acceptance–or a short-term offense–gay is natural and biological therefore we are true and right–then, I don’t know, sexuality stays limited and literalist, and we would never get a book (nor movie) like Call Me By Your Name.
The argument behind gesture is that it puts a little bit of freedom into ethics, into so many things we see as determined and set as true. It wiggles ethics. And so this is what I did.