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Photographic Flashes: on Imaging Trans Violence in Heather Cassils

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Photographic Flashes: on Imaging Trans Violence in Heather Cassils Photography & Culture Photographic Flashes: Volume 7—Issue 3 On Imaging Trans November 2014 pp. 253–268 Violence in Heather DOI: 10.2752/175145214X14153800234775 Cassils’ Durational Art Reprints available directly from the publishers Eliza Steinbock Photocopying permitted by licence only © Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2014 Abstract This article examines the aesthetic strategy of fash photography to visualize everyday violence against trans people in the visual art of Heather Cassils (2011–14). In addition to PLCusing photographic fashes to blind audiences, these works reference violence on multiple levels: institutional discrimination through the location in an empty archive room, killings through martial arts choreographies, and microaggressions in aesthetics of defacement. However, the rigorous physical training undergone for his body art also suggests a productive mode of violence in that muscles must fail in order to grow. I trace the recurrence of the spasm across these different forms of embodied violence to show its generative as well as destructive property. This body of work opens up questions about the historiography of photography: What is the temporality of photographic violence? How can the body’s resiliency be pictured? Does a E-printtrans body experienced as a punctum indicate queer anxieties? Keywords: transgender, fash photography, temporality, punctum, sensation, Heather Cassils “I am a visual artist, and my body is my medium,” reads the frst line of the artist statement from Los Angeles-based Heather Cassils (2013: online n.p.).1 Since 2007 Cassils’ major works have involved embarking on a strict training program that takes his physicality and somatic skills to a professional level. For instance, Cassils is a personal trainer, and for Cuts: A BLOOMSBURYTraditional Sculpture (2011) he followed a specially designed diet and bodybuilding regime for twenty-three weeks in order to amass twenty-three pounds of muscle.2 And, for Becoming an © Image (hereafter, BAI 2012—ongoing) he was instructed by a pro-Muay Thai boxer for three weeks before the performance (Cassils is a former semipro boxer). The audience’s experience of BIA was further governed by Cassils’ physical endurance: Photography & Culture Volume 7 Issue 3 November 2014, pp. 253–268 254 Photographic Flashes Eliza Steinbock the performed all-out attack lasted until his accompanying historiography, plays a key role body ran out of oxygen, or “gassed out.” in how the works visualize violence’s varying Durational art like Cassils’ practices places durational qualities for the spectator. Cassils’ the component of time and its restriction at recent work opens up a set of questions relevant the core of the work, making the artist’s and/ to the study of gender variant and queer visual or the spectator’s bodily endurance the focus. cultures: Does a trans body experienced as a High culture artists such as John Cage (1912–92) punctum (a detail or intensity of time that pricks and Linda Mary Montano (b. 1942) are often the viewer) indicate queer anxieties? What categorized as creating durational art; their is the temporality of photographic violence? works involve taking eighteen hours to repeat a How can the body’s resiliency be pictured? piano theme 840 times or lasting for one year The article advances by tracking intersecting of being attached to another person with an violences in Cassils’ Cuts and BAI, and then 8-foot rope, respectively.3 The performances of concludes with a consideration of bodybuildingPLC Cassils similarly explore the effects of temporal as a model for understanding the dual nature duration on the human body through set of violence’s generative-destructive powers. regimens, but with a specifc trans* infection.4 The project Cuts supplants the cuts of gender Cuts in Time affrming surgeries with extreme training for a Cuts was the outcome of Cassils becoming “cut” muscularity, including a very low dosage a commissioned artist researcher for Los of steroids (Cassils n.d.).5 Besides the resulting Angeles Goes Live (2010–11). He was asked to embodiment, the project includes documenting contribute to the exhibition called Performance the transformation of his transmasculine body in Southern California 1970–1983 with a new through time-lapse photography and through artwork that spoke to the rich history of the aestheticizing photographs reminiscent of the area’s performance culture. The piece cites fashion world. In contrast BAI has a stripped two main feminist artistic sources from the down design that displaces his body’sE-print visuality. 1970s, both of which incorporate gendered While Cassils pummels a 2,000-pound clay performance with photographic display. The title plinth in a blacked-out room, a photography of Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture (2011) explicitly camera randomly fashes, striking the audience’s recalls Eleanor Antin’s titling of the performance eyes to represent “all the senseless invisible Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972). violence we tolerate” that is directed at trans Antin’s version is a time-lapse photographic people (personal communication 2013). documentation of a thirty-day crash diet. Each This article examines how differing durations day she posed nude in front of a white door become juxtaposed in Cassils’ mixed media work to be photographed from four different angles as destructive and generative forms of violence. (front, back, both sides) to record in 148 I focus primarily on 1) the discrete duration of images the “carving” away, through starving no the performance training, 2) the long duration less, of 9 pounds from her physical body. By of suffering endured by BLOOMSBURYtrans people, and 3) analogy to the feminine tradition of dieting to the indeterminate durée of fash photography reach the ideal aesthetic form of thinness, the and its afterimage. Notwithstanding the strong work parodies the Greek sculptural technique performance qualities© and athleticism noted of removal in layers (Johnson 2006: 315). by scholarly reviews of Cassils (Doyle 2013; The violent tone of “carving” that Cassils Jankovic 2013; Jovanovich 2013), I argue that borrows in Cuts carries a transgender resonance. the medium of photography, along with its Contemporary “transitioned” embodiment is still Photography & Culture Volume 7 Issue 3 November 2014, pp. 253–268 Eliza Steinbock Photographic Flashes 255 largely defned through surgical incisions following lapse documentary photographs taken in hormonal therapy (Spade 2003). Whereas the front of a white backdrop to record his nude popular notion of trans embodiment involves body from four positions (see Figure 1). crossing from one sex to another accomplished However, these grids of photos show the in the event of a “sex change,” Cassils claims body’s capacity for becoming masculine through to perform trans as “a continual becoming, a the addition of musculature, accentuated process oriented way of being that works in a by the removal of fat, and its redistribution. space of indeterminacy, spasm and slipperiness” In both cases diet and exercise mark out a (Cassils n.d.). Spasm in this defnition can refer temporality that feminist art scholar Clare to a bodybuilder’s strained muscles, as well as Johnson describes as a “future-oriented to unpredictable shifts in gender perception duration” (2006: 315), in which the body shrinks while on hormones. To emphasize a spasmodic, or grows to become gendered ideals. The processual version of trans embodiment, instant temporality of photography seemsPLC to Cassils uses the same technique of daily time- arrest, or fx, the development of becoming E-print BLOOMSBURY © Fig 1 Heather Cassils, Day One Day One Hundred and Sixty One, Detail from Time Lapse (Front) 2011 (artwork and photos © Heather Cassils; part of the body of work Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture) (40 × 60 in.). Photography & Culture Volume 7 Issue 3 November 2014, pp. 253–268 256 Photographic Flashes Eliza Steinbock feminine/masculine. Nevertheless, the grid-like painted lips. Both photographs are shot straight documentation invites anticipatory looking on, in a medium close-up framing of the fgure for the narrative of progress. The potential in a turned pose, and use hard studio lighting to teleological trajectory of gender as development accentuate the surface of the body. The stylization is undercut by the fnitude of the projects. Each suggests appearances are (just about) everything. project creates short-term, unsustainable living Whereas Benglis targeted the “male ethos” sculptures to amplify the general condition of the minimalist movement by running the ad in of perpetual, open-ended body sculpting. the art establishment magazine Artforum (Taylor Challenging ideal regimes of gender 2005: 29–30), Cassils challenges homoerotic presentation is also at the heart of the second aesthetics by circulating the image to gay feminist performance from which the Cuts fashion and art publications. The collaborating project explicitly draws inspiration. For this photographer Robin Black, who is often mistaken part of the project Cassils’ titling Advertisement: for a gay man for her sexualized nudes PLCof men, Homage to Benglis (2011) references Lynda used her connections to leak the image, along Benglis’ scandalous Artforum magazine with a link to the blog and zine LADY FACE// intervention Advertisement (1974) as a dialogue MAN BODY (Cassils 2011: online n.p.). Much like partner to discuss issues of eroticism and self- the intense reaction from feminists that Benglis commodifcation. For this paid
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