Paul Clinton, Body-Bildung: The Brain as a Muscle
Saturday 04 Jun 2022 from 3pm to 4pm
Free entry
Trois pièces faciles, 2022
© Sico Carlier
Responding in some part to the work of artist Sico Carlier, this encounter asks the question: is the critique of homo-eroticism enough, or is it an excuse for the pleasure to continue?
Homoeroticism is the lingua franca of gay self-representation: excerpts from pornographic films, clippings from bodybuilding magazines, sometimes subverted, often only lightly titillated by criticism, are its daily bread.
But it fails to address the political issues that concern it: its presentation of identity as a continuous story, its masculinist bias, the need for a critique of representation, the boundary between pleasure and progressivism, the self-merchandising of gay culture, the parodic or non-parodic potential of the muscle queen.
Ultimately, homoeroticism represents the melodrama of the gap between public political goals and the private desires of individuals - the gap, always allegedly closed, between desire and theory.
But it fails to address the political issues that concern it: its presentation of identity as a continuous story, its masculinist bias, the need for a critique of representation, the boundary between pleasure and progressivism, the self-merchandising of gay culture, the parodic or non-parodic potential of the muscle queen.
Ultimately, homoeroticism represents the melodrama of the gap between public political goals and the private desires of individuals - the gap, always allegedly closed, between desire and theory.