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Fracture: Failure As a Path to Utopia in Queer Art and Life

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Fracture: Failure As a Path to Utopia in Queer Art and Life Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Art and Design Theses Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design 5-9-2015 Fracture: Failure as a Path to Utopia in Queer Art and Life Charles D. Snyder Jr Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/art_design_theses Recommended Citation Snyder, Charles D. Jr, "Fracture: Failure as a Path to Utopia in Queer Art and Life." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2015. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/art_design_theses/175 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art and Design Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FRACTURE: FAILURE AS A PATH TO UTOPIA IN QUEER ART AND LIFE By CHARLES DOUGLAS SNYDER, JR. Under the Direction of Constance Thalken, MFA ABSTRACT Reproductive Futurism is the pervasive structuring of politics and society around securing of the future through fealty to a figurative Child. The primary means of the Child’s proliferation is the normalizing of hetero-reproduction, which privileges heterosexuality with validity and meaning. Fracture represents a body of work that illustrates my personal break with these normalizing structures, and through embracing my queer sexuality a refusal of the figurative Child and the future it represents. The work articulates the role sex played in my failure to adhere to (liberation from) normative relational structures, and proposes potential new configurations of bodies and filial bonds born from that failure. The work also represents a material shift in my work from photographic prints to intermedia/installation. The evolution of my process as an artist was informed by my personal transformation; my vision of the world shifted, so too did my material/aesthetic response to that world. INDEX WORDS: queer, heteronormativity, failure, utopia, temporality, historicity, reproductive futurism, photography, glass, mirrors, post modernism, conceptual art FRACTURE: FAILURE AS A PATH TO UTOPIA IN QUEER ART AND LIFE By CHARLES DOUGLAS SNYDER, JR. A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2015 Copyright by Charles Douglas Snyder Jr. 2015 FRACTURE: FAILURE AS A PATH TO UTOPIA IN QUEER ART AND LIFE By CHARLES DOUGLAS SNYDER, JR. Committee Chair: Constance Thalken Committee: Susan Richmond Nancy Floyd Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2015 iv DEDICATION To my family, both logical and biological, your support and encouragement throughout my life has largely shaped the artist I am today. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the guidance, encouragement, and support of my thesis committee. In addition, I benefited greatly from the support of Jonathan Walz, Lily Woodruff, Mark Errol, and many other queer academics and artists. Thank you all for your invaluable support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ V TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... VI LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................... VII 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 2 GLASS HOUSES ......................................................................................... 3 2.1 The Normative .............................................................................................. 4 2.2 The Fractures ................................................................................................ 5 2.3 A Queer Shattering ...................................................................................... 7 3 THE PROCESS OF BREAKING AND MAKING ................................. 10 3.1 Fucking Visuals/Visual Fucking ............................................................... 11 3.2 A Hand Full of Shards ............................................................................... 12 3.3 Failure Leads to More Breaking ............................................................... 13 4 MADE OF BROKEN PIECES ................................................................. 36 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 38 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 (un)Domesticated #1 (C&Q), 2014, Mixed Media on Glass, 4x6” ............ 14 Figure 3.2 (un)Domesticated #’s 1-3, 2014, Mixed Media on Glass, 4x6 ................... 15 Figure 3.3 Lucas Samaras, Photo Transformation, 1973-74, Polaroid, 3x3” ............ 17 Figure 3.4 Lucas Samaras, Reconstruction #20, 1977, Sewn fabrics, 87x85” ........... 18 Figure 3.5 Quilt Experiment #1, 2014, Mixed Media on Glass, 12x12” ..................... 19 Figure 3.6 Quilt Experiment #4, 2014, Mixed Media on Glass, 12x12” ..................... 20 Figure 3.7 Untitled (C&E, #1), 2014, Mixed Media on Glass ..................................... 22 Figure 3.8 Untitled (C&E, #2), 2014, Mixed Media on Glass ..................................... 23 Figure 3.9 Untitled (C&E, #3), 2014, Mixed Media on Glass ..................................... 24 Figure 3.10 Untitled (C&Q, #1), 2014, Mixed Media on Glass ................................... 25 Figure 3.11 Untitled (C&Q, #2), 2014, Mixed Media on Glass ................................... 26 Figure 3.12 Untitled (C&Q, #3), 2014, Mixed Media on Glass ................................... 27 Figure 3.13 Lucas Samaras, Room #2 (Mirrored Room), 1966, Wood, Mirror, 8x10x8’ 29 Figure 3.14 Fracture Installation view #1, 2015, Mirror, video projection ............... 30 Figure 3.15 Fracture Installation view #2, 2015, Mirror, video projection ............... 31 Figure 3.16 Fracture Installation view #3, 2015, Mirror, video projection ............... 32 Figure 3.17 Fracture Installation view #4, 2015, Mirror, video projection ............... 33 Figure 3.18 Fracture Installation view #5, 2015, Mirror, video projection ............... 34 Figure 3.19 Fracture Installation view #6, 2015, Mirror, video projection ............... 35 1 1 INTRODUCTION On the last day of April, 2013 I ended a 14-year relationship with my first boyfriend/the man to whom I had given my virginity/my “life partner.” While many factors contributed to the slow breakdown of that union, one of the most substantial factors was my realization that I had outgrown the need to structure my sexual/emotional life in accordance to a mimetic heteronormative model. I had become increasingly uncomfortable with the roles that my partner and I had developed within our relationship, the established pantomimes that continually dictated how we responded to the world and each other, and the domestic narrative that seemed to hedge us within its boundaries. However, my break from the bounds of heteronormativity was not a clean one. Upon leaving the home I shared with my partner I found myself moving into a new home and new relationship that I quickly and unconsciously began to reshape into the same parody of hetero-domesticity. In June of 2013, this relationship also ended. As with most personal narratives endings are bittersweet, but are also the foundation of new beginnings. Fracture is a body of work that addresses these endings. The perniciousness of heteronormative conditioning has always existed on the periphery of my awareness: the repeated cultural narratives of “man + woman = happiness”; the constant reification of the nuclear family in media, politics, and religion; and the modeling of normativity by my family and community. While aware of the pervasiveness of these messages, I was unaware of how deeply they had embedded themselves into my subconscious. As my graduate research led me down the rabbit hole of queer theory, I began to see more clearly the narratives I had integrated into my 2 identity. I began to recognize my own internalized homophobia driven by my association of queer sexuality with disease, my acceptance of the validation of love through monogamy, and my attachment to heterosexual temporality. Fracture seeks to visually articulate the disruption of my own pattern of hetero- mimesis. Through the use of layered imagery, projection, and materiality the work builds a visual metaphor for the process of breaking down illusions of hetero-domesticity and normative sexual behavior that characterized both of my recent relationships. This is largely accomplished via a shift in materials and means within my artistic practice; formerly a strictly lens-based artist, Fracture manifested as a rejection of traditional photographic production and evolved into transformations of photographic imagery into broken glass sculptures and shattered mirror projections. The work plays with dualities of mastery and failure, and romanticism and realism as a means of juxtaposing the hetero- mimetic and the queer. The work resists a linear narrative that would privilege heterosexual temporality and instead works to construct a queer space/time within which the images can be read as a queer sexual awakening. 3 2 GLASS HOUSES January 3rd, 2013, I hurled the first stone at the glass house of my marriage. It
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