three states

           

            Andy Warhol said, “everything is nothing.”  What I have attempted to visually display through my video art is the inverse of this statement, that nothing is everything.  three states is my latest attempt at visualizing my modified Warholian perspective.  Stylistically, three states resembles my earlier works, but conceptually, it is an evolution of my perspective on sexual positioning and identity.

            My first piece, i can sleep again, began the style that has come to define my work.  With its lack of color and spoken dialogue, i can sleep again accounts a personal experience with HIV testing.  In little over two minutes, my experience is detailed visually through medical papers, and partial views of the body.   It was in this attempt to convey my experience visually that I arrived at what would become my preferred medium of self expression.      

            All of my work is produced with the purpose of expressing my sexual identity.  I perform the roles representative of my perspective as I have never been comfortable with allowing someone else to perform a central element of my person.  Perhaps the reason I find the idea of another individual performing my sexual identity so unsettling is because of the manner in which this position is visually (under)represented in our culture.  My sexual positioning places me in a contested space of identity in the American sexual spectrum.  As a culture that tends to view sexuality in a polarized manner with homosexuality and heterosexuality occupying the extremes, a positioning between these poles is absent as a legitimate sexual identity.
            Visual representation of bisexual positioning is rarely seen.  When it is portrayed, it is exploited for its pornographic possibilities.  I attribute the scarcity of bisexual visual representation to two sources.  The complexity of visually displaying bisexuality is the first factor that leaves this identity underrepresented.  Portraying such a sexuality visually must somehow overcome what seems to be the impossible task of representation without exploitation.   We come to know an individual’s sexuality through the visibility of their sexual partner(s).  Without representation of a bisexual individual engaged in sexual encounters with both genders, the character’s sexuality is only partially represented.  When bisexual characters are shown in sexual contexts with both genders it inevitably portrays bisexuality and monogamy as mutually exclusive.  Pornography is the principal abuser of bisexual identity, often portraying women in heterosexual pornography as bisexual to enhance heterosexual male fantasy.   This inability to represent bisexuality without exploiting it contributes to its invisibility in our culture.

            I am guilty of such exploitation myself.  both, a six minute, nonlinear narrative attempt at articulating my sexuality, relies on my visual representation in sexual contexts with both men and women.  As an individual who claims a bisexual identity and struggles with its representation, the complexity of visually portraying such a positioning is clear.

            The other source which I believe prevents the visibility of bisexuality is the denial by both homosexuals and heterosexuals of bisexuality as a legitimate sexual positioning.  Denial of bisexuality in my experience is grounded in two prominent conceptions.  One being the belief that the “bisexual” individual is homosexual and unable to part with the privilege that is derived from heterosexuality.   The other being that the person is going through a phase.  As a culture we deny the existence of a continuum between the extremes of heterosexuality and homosexuality.  The disbelief that an individual can possess two seemingly opposing sexualities and create a bisexual identity from them renders bisexuality an illegitimate position. 

            As visibility lends authenticity to identity, I continue struggling to represent bisexuality in hopes that it will become a less contested sexual positioning.   three states is my first successful attempt at presenting a bisexual identity without exploiting it in some manner.  There is no explicit sexual imagery or any obvious reference to sexuality in three states.  The video details an overly ritualized boring day.  The constant image of the light switch upon every entry and exit of a room and the duplication of camera angles throughout the day attempt to divorce the video from all that is explicitly sexual, indeed making it boring. 

            While lacking any obvious sexual imagery, virtually every shot represents a reference to bisexual positioning.  three states is a reference to the three states of matter (disregarding plasma), solid, liquid, and gas.  Like matter, I believe sexuality to have three dominant states, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality.  Defined as the polar ends of the sexual spectrum in our culture, homosexuality and heterosexuality would compare to the extremes of the three possible states of matter.  Homosexuality and heterosexuality would occupy the solid and gas states, leaving bisexuality in between to occupy the liquid state.  Occupation of the liquid state allows bisexuality to be seen as fluid and capable of easily transcending the boundaries of the states to become a solid or gas at any given moment. 

            The three states of matter are portrayed throughout the video through the medium of water.  Liquid is the state of matter that is seen most frequently in three states.  In only this state, do we find my body and world reflected and immersed.  Through the boiling water on the stove and the ice cubes in the glass, homosexuality and heterosexuality are given visual presence in my world.  Because the gas and solid states are shown little in comparison to the liquid state, it presents bisexuality as the dominant perspective of three states.  The immersion and reflection in the liquid state are to be seen in opposition to the absence of such characteristics in other states.  Reflections and interactions only occur when water is in the liquid state, representing my sexual identity as bisexual.

            The centrality of the bathroom as a visual image in three states is not unintentional.  When I was growing up, I lived in over 20 different houses.  I often found myself living in extended family situations which called for the restructuring of space.  This process usually involved throwing a mattress on the sewing room or living room floor.  Once, I shared a room with a washer, a dryer, a freezer, and two water tanks as the utility room was renamed, “Danyele’s bedroom.”  As a result, my bedroom was never a space I considered my own.  In my search for a private space, the bathroom became the only place I could be alone.  The bathroom has continued to be a personal space for me through the present.  Most people would regard the bathroom as a personal space simply for the events that occur there, but the bathroom is the space where I feel a sense of ownership.  

            The bathroom is the place where I construct my physical identity.  In this room I make conscious decisions as to how I will present my body to you.  The numerous boxes of Feria and Manic Panic, the makeup spanning the countertop, and the ability to remove all of these choices at the sink, make the bathroom a central location of my physical identity construction.  Making the bathroom a central visual image in three states and my other works is a conscious decision to let the viewer see the space where so many of my identity battles are waged.

            The images I present the viewer and the meaning they are to symbolize embody the idea that nothing is everything.  Visually, I show you nothing.  I show you toilets, light-switches, television, boiling water, nothing.  These are not the objects that deep contemplation surrounds.  These are meaningless pieces of our physical landscape and yet, I have used them to visually represent my sexual identity.  By representing sexuality, a central component of humanity through these ordinary objects, I am attempting to show that nothing is everything.  These objects that we ignore, that we regard as nothing, can be used as powerful symbols for representing identity and identity is everything.