NYC RESIDENCY
REFLECTIVE NOTES: 4 days between 28-31 Oct 2021
I attended the first 3 of the 4 day Transart's October 2021 SESSION 11.2 MICRO-RESIDENCY NEW YORK.
DAY 1- I was among several 1st and 2nd year TT/LJMU Postgraduate Researchers who, for the first time in-person, met at Bluestone Lane church, Thur 28 October 2021. From there we headed to the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and took in Suzie Zuzek for Lilly Pulitzer: The Prints That Made the Fashion Brand www.cooperhewitt.org/channel/zuzek/
Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer
www.cooperhewitt.org/channel/kauffer/
Nature by Design: Selections from the Permanent Collection, and Jon Gray of Ghetto Gastro Selects www.cooperhewitt.org/channel/jon-gray-o…
I spent Thursday afternoon with TT cohort members at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. First was sat in on Designed Realities: A Table Talk With Fiona Raby dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects.
Then we did two studio visits with radically different but equally impressive artists:
Jason File www.jasonfile.com/works, and
A Young Yu www.ayoung-yu.com/.
During a waiting period, Allison Geremia passed a hatful of art methodological terms. I drew a torn piece of paper with "Feminism" handwritten on it. Next she placed her LL Bean boot on the table and asked everyone to, from their drawn method, analyze it. I quickly researched "LL Bean hunting boots" and found that in 1911, “L.L.” returned from a hunting trip with cold, damp feet and a revolutionary idea. By combining leather uppers with rubber bottoms, he created an innovative boot that changed footwear forever.
I looked up the symbolism of the boot and found: the boot as a dominatrix prop; power and control in relationship to eroticism and dominance. And that lead to my reading about... One of the earliest descriptions of boots as a fetishistic object can be found in Émile Zola's 1868 novel 'Thérèse Raquin'. Actual boot fetishism is described in the diaries of 19th century British woman Hannah Cullwick, of which parts have been published. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth described boot fetishism scientifically in 1915. This article has also been published in English with comments by Arlene K. Richards in 1990, as Female fetishes and female perversions: Hermine Hug-Hellmuth's "A case of female foot or more properly boot fetishism" reconsidered.
...Boots are usually seen as a sign of empowerment for the wearer, especially when worn by women. This may be a reason for the connection to BDSM, where boots usually are seen as a statement of dominance. So-called boot worship became a common subcultural practice among sadomasochists and related fetishists in the early 20th century...
And maybe most fittingly for a feminist analysis of the LL Bean hunting boot...*Boot fetishism may be accompanied by a fetish for the material from which it is made, such as leather, rubber, or latex...Boot fetishism is a sexual fetish focused on boots... Boots are seen as perhaps the most fetishistic of all footwear and boots may be the most popular fetish clothing attire.
We ended the day with a Fusions and Disjunctions table talk with the stunning performance artist/figurative painter David Antonio Cruz www.cruzantoniodavid.com/.
DAY 2- On Friday several of us saw the MoMA PS1's 5th Greater New York survey of artists living and working in the New York City area...(Note: When I saw STROBE ON 3, image above, I thought it was the conceptual light installation...haha...only when I got to STROBE ON 2 did I realize that the piece was the upcoming strobe lights...being a migraine sufferer, I left before it began. See some installation pics of works I did see: www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5352?…. And in the afternoon we took in Whitney Museum exhibitions, including their part of the 65 year Jasper Johns Mind/Mirror survey: whitney.org/exhibitions/jasper-johns, Labyrinth of Forms: Women and Abstraction, 1930–1950 whitney.org/exhibitions/labyrinth-of-fo…, Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 whitney.org/exhibitions/making-knowing, and Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing whitney.org/exhibitions/jennifer-packer
DAY 3- Saturday morning about seven of us took part in Stephen Kwok's Blocking event at the Swiss institute on St Mark's Place. www.newinc.org/year-8-members/stephen-k…. That afternoon, we participated in Awarness: A Somatic Movement Session with Luis lara Malvacias laramalvacias.org/HOME_1.html That evening, after Hyphenation, A talk WITH STEPHEN KWOK, at his Brooklyn studio, a handful of TT researchers presented on our own work. I spoke on my Pink Drishti paintings ginadominique.com/section/484362-2018-2… and accompanying Pink Universe installation ginadominique.com/home.html.
