This thesis is dedicated to queer people and all those who embrace risk.

“…AIDS gave gay men new reason to be curious about what’s inside our bodies and how it got there… HIV entered [gay men’s] bodies, via a sexual means, before they knew it. I’m not sure that the traumatic significance of this historical sequence has been fully appreciated: HIV got inside the bodies of individual men and inside the gay community before we were aware of its existence. Bodily and psychic barriers thus were breached on a massive scale… Irrespective of his own serostatus, every gay man was urged to erect and maintain prophylactic boundaries between his body and others, especially those with whom he was intimate. But what kind of intimacy insists on maintaining an impenetrable boundary between the persons involved? And what is at stake in maintaining a barrier against something you cannot see, something that thereby becomes particularly susceptible to fantasmatic investment?”

-Tim Dean

From, Unlimited Intimacy

Bugchaser: Protective Measures

Introduction

Bugchaser: Protective Measures is a visual examination, through photographic and video new-media—of extreme acts of deterrence and community building—in the wake of significant social and biological upheaval over the course of the 20^th century. It is a conceptual demonstration of widespread counter-behaviors, using metaphors and contemporary art forms representing responses to danger and risk. Specifically and perhaps most accurately, this work is an analysis of how certain components of contemporary US culture define and act out intimacy through the micro-synergy of subcultures, the separatism of the masses, and vice-versa. Bugchaser: Protective Measures is an exploitation of the conflicting nature of those practices.

The culmination of one of my recent series of work, Bugchaser, came in the form of a video piece entitled, Bugchaser: Protective Measures. The video is what sparked this current work and is a foundational component of the visual exhibition. [Figure 1] The original series served to promote self-examination for queer men within the context of a specific counterpublic, characterized by risky sexual behaviors. Before commenting on the wider culture, it was important for me to gain a first-hand understanding of the culture of bugchasing. I needed to explore and speak within the boundaries of a community with which I ultimately came to identify. It was introverted, self-conscious, and about ambivalence. I was mostly speaking to queer men. Now it has become necessary to extend the investigation outside the borders of the subculture. As a result, the new work is extroverted and somewhat bellicose, demanding reflection amongst a larger, U.S. public.[1] Namely, I am implicating middle-class, suburban culture (from where I was raised) in its failure to provide abundant solutions to dilemmas surrounding community building and intimacy. By combining bugchasers and suburbia into one body of work, I am forcing a comparative engagement despite each group’s exclusive definitions or, in other words, I am projecting the suburban environment’s complicity with the act of bugchasing. By exploring both communities in relation to one another, I aim to bring a more complex understanding of each.

The juxtaposition of contrary responses to this inquiry plays an essential role to this thesis. Protective Measures could be a meditation on the elaborate nature of devices that contemporary suburbia employs in coping with danger. It could also be the sanctification of the seemingly inevitable by some queer men. As Tim Dean has written in his book Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, “By embracing risk one eliminates risk, in the… sense that seroconversion alleviates the perpetual worry about HIV infection.”[2] Through the implication of seemingly disparate communities i.e., bugchasers and suburbia and their responses to perceived danger subjectively that is, AIDS, or non-heteronormative sexual practices, I am questioning conventional modes of safety and protection practiced by individuals in both communities. Ultimately, the intent of this work is to uproot the conventional notions of intimacy as viewed by the suburban middle class and to de-stigmatize the unconventional by accosting and ultimately attempting to tear down boundaries that divide.

Chapter One

David Wojnarowicz describes “the other world” in his book, Close to the Knives, as a place that exists by virtue of being distinct from the self. It thrives counter to the safety and comfort of autonomous identity.

First there is the World. Then there is the Other World. The Other World is where I sometimes lose my footing. In its calendar turnings, in its preinvented existence. The barrage of twists and turns where I sometimes get weary trying to keep up with it, minute by minute adapt: the world of the stoplight, the no-smoking signs, the rental world, the split-rail fencing shielding hundreds of miles of barren wilderness from the human step. A place where by virtue of having been born centuries late one is denied access to earth or space, choice or movement. The bought-up world; the owned world. The world of coded sounds: the world of language, the world of lies. The packaged world; the world of speed in metallic motion. The other world where I’ve always felt like an alien.[3]

It is important to note the context for which Wojnarowicz is writing: Living Close to the Knives is a rallying cry from the perspective of a gay man living with AIDS in New York City at the beginning of the crisis (the book was written circa 1991). He is also a city dweller writing his observations of, and reactions to, a U.S. public who he sees as completely apathetic to the increasing threat of AIDS and to queer people in general. [4] Wojnarowicz’s description of the other world sets up the comparison that I am making with my own work, between the bugchasing community and suburbia. Wojnarowicz represents one world, characterized by disease and marginalized sexuality, similar to bugchasers. The other world, by contrast is the complacent world of the mainstream or populace. Wojnarowicz is obviously expanding his vision of the other world to include the widest reaches, whereas I am limiting it to the more specific realm of suburbia. The notion of boundaries or borders that run between worlds is key in both instances. Wojnarowicz implies boundaries within the essence of all that his work represents, catering to the bellicosity of those on the fringes and focusing his attentions to the place where that conflict ensues. I am also interested in this marginal place and all of the spaces potentially built, observed and manipulated in the spirit of conflicting expressions of intimacies and responses to risk.

Michael Warner’s Publics and Counterpublics is an eloquent study of the ways in which group identities are formed and maintained: “The bourgeois public sphere consists of private persons whose identity is formed in the privacy of the conjugal domestic family and who enter into rational-critical debate around matters common to all by bracketing their embodiment and status.” He continues, “A public is a space of discourse organized by nothing other than discourse itself.” He explains that… “counterpublics of sexuality and gender… are scenes of association and identity that transform the private lives they mediate.”[5] Based on this, any group or identity brought forth in Bugchaser: Protective Measures is either a public or a counterpublic, depending on the observer and the relationship between related images. The function of the visual thesis is to exploit each potential relationship that an individual might bring to the work in relation to the respective common setting. The boundaries running between the publics and counterpublics presented here are complex. I am complicating the viewer’s tendency to necessitate obvious identification with either one world or another. That is not to say that the power relations inherent in the identification with a particular public are not present. An overly beautified portrait of a suburban home resides next to an ominous depiction of the back of another house (perhaps the same house?), separated by darkness, roughage, and debris. The juxtaposition develops into an intricate narrative. Who identifies with which setting? What happens when a still from the sub-cultural iconographic medium of queer hardcore bareback porn enters the sphere of suburban existence? Together these experiences form new publics or counterpublics, in the context of an artistic space—and ideally beyond that space through the discourse that it evokes.

In an effort to avoid warding off anyone who might be unfamiliar with the subcultural practices of bareback sex and bugchasing, I will provide a short, introductory definition to help explain my usage of the terms. Very simply put (though the subject is far from simple), a bugchaser is a label used to describe a supposed HIV-negative queer man who seeks out HIV-positive sexual partners, with the intent to engage in risky (condom-less or bareback) sex, and ultimately to induce sero-conversion. That is the simple definition. This work is not about trying to focus solely on that particular lifestyle. Instead, I am attempting to expand the usefulness of the term using the symbolism of sexual risk juxtaposed against the insidious suburban landscape. In other words, the images of suburbia comprise a narrative for the supposed prevention of risk, which is deceptive, juxtaposed against those who embrace risk. I am making a comparison between the coping mechanisms that both groups utilize in response to danger. The men depicted in the work represent risky sexual behaviors as they struggle with condoms, the limitations of the Internet and other coping mechanisms such as drug use and the spectacle of promiscuity. For suburbanites, the structure of the suburban landscape indicates protection in the form of isolation and separatism, or protection from the other as evidenced by the fundamental structure, combined with the ever-expanding sprawl, of suburbia. I would consider both to be potentially unsustainable lifestyles. The symbolism depicted in this imagery, representing both bugchasers and suburbia, illustrates the distinct functions of barriers amongst each group subjectively. The late filmmaker Derek Jarman once said about the queer culture of the late 20^th century, “I met people and saw things that I would have never seen if I would have been in the heterosexual world, which is more codified, very codified, and this world is not codified… because (well it was as old as the hills...) but it was so completely new. I’ve seen hysterical things. I don’t even know where to begin… I mean one of my lovers was a mass murderer…” I’m not so convinced that today’s standards of being heterosexual and homosexual are necessitated by actual sex. Jarman was speaking about the codification of norms, which seemed to him to be primarily a characteristic of the straight world. Today’s straight world certainly includes homosexuals. This is evidenced by the marriage movement. In fact, as Michael Warner points out in his book, The Trouble With Normal, marriage is not a queer or necessarily even a gay movement. Rather, it is a straight movement or a movement for lesbians and gay men to become more straight and less queer.[6] I only point this out so that it is clear that I am making a distinction between sex and the politics of normalization or the behaviors engaged in by queer men and normalization-seeking gays. For this work and based on Warner’s study, it is more likely that gay men and lesbians who are pro-marriage would fit within the codification of the suburban environment, whereas bugchasers have created their own, distinctly codified counterpublic. By juxtaposing them against one another, I am making a cohesive statement about the effectiveness of each group’s coping mechanisms.

The convolution of distinct modes of coping demands a sense of openness, which is a primary goal of this work. Tim Dean provides a useful framework for this type of analysis. He writes, “In advocating an ethic of openness to alterity, Unlimited Intimacy suggests that [bugchasing] allegorizes such openness through its acceptance of risk and its willingness to dispense with barriers…”[7] Similar to the use of free association through open observation of alterity within psychoanalysis demonstrated by Dean, I am asking the viewer to reexamine suburbia while considering the metaphors brought forth by the imagery of bugchasing, in the spirit of a bugchaser’s code of openness. Are suburban barriers productively functioning as they are intended? What are the consequences of such barriers? I am asking the viewer to consider the objectivity of suburbia in the same way that a bugchaser would think about a condom. Quite literally, I have utilized the condom as a filter in some of the imagery in order to more artfully demonstrate this point. By viewing suburban interiors through such a filter, the audience gains a sense of intimate spaces, skewed by manufactured skin. Similarly, the imagery of bugchasers does not go without challenge. The narratives created by the imagery of bugchasing depict an honest defiance and ambivalence, a community perhaps vanquished, struggling with, or rejecting outright, the boundaries that outsiders presume they have an obligation to engage.

The suburban landscape serves as the perfect metaphor for this study because it most appropriately represents one world, while juxtaposed against the backdrop of queer sexual practices. Video and moving media, as well as representations of the Internet, photographic compositing, and the composition of images are tools that I have utilized, serving to interrupt views of idyllic portraits and landscapes within the suburbs. The infiltration of sensations forced into the realm of observation between the viewer and suburbia functions as otherworldly, or foreign. Suburbia, contrarily and in the shadow of the subculture of bugchasing and bareback sex, represents the other world, more in line as David Wojnarowicz describes. The language and experience of the bugchaser redefines suburbia.

What I am offering is to add more to the current limited discourse regarding contemporary practices surrounding intimacy, especially as it relates to sexual acts and cultural protection. I am enormously indebted to the humanizing effect of Dean’s thorough analysis. He has brought the cultural practices of bareback sex and bugchasing away from the standard, clinical gaze as pathological and galvanized it into a more human occurrence. I consider my own work to be a visual extension of this. Dean illustrates that intimacy and risk are not problems solely of bugchasers or barebackers and that they are hardly the only groups to have initiated such troubled solutions to human/viral physiology—especially as it pertains to sex. “The rhetoric of safety engulfing U.S. society and culture leaves us disproportionately terrified of risk in all forms, including the risks of contact with those of different classes, races, sexualities or nationalities. This rhetoric of safety exploits our terror of the unfamiliar in the service of consolidating class hierarchies, maintaining racial segregation, and intensifying xenophobia.”[8]

Leo Bersani explores the inadequacies of the simplistic use of symbolic vernacular by bugchasers in his essay, Shame on You, from the book Intimacies. Published before the release of Dean’s complete analysis,[9] it capitulates on the failings of bugchasers, in their attempt at building a sense of community and their goal of creating a valid course to intimacy. His argument goes that if bugchasing leads to the spread of disease, and eventually suffering and death, it cannot be conducive to an effective or prolific sense of intimacy and is ultimately irresponsible. In short, according to Bersani, chasing a bug does not provide sustainable alternatives to standard expressions of intimacy.[10] In this way, Shame on You does provide a useful argument regarding the failings of simplistic vernacular but Bersani’s analysis does not cease in functioning to exploit queer men who engage in risky sexual behaviors. It does so without a complete appreciation for Dean’s invocation of alterity. In other words, Bersani focuses too much on the oversimplified notion that bug equals deadly virus and chasing equals self-destructive behavior. Perhaps one of the failings of bugchasers is relying on overly simplistic ideas such as chasing a bug, but it is also evidentiary of the lack of a more complex discourse amongst the larger culture. I have a deep appreciation for the creative power of the vernacular that surrounds gay male culture (or subcultures). I also believe that to exploit the behaviors of groups of people, who, of course are not us, we miss the entire point. In the context of my work, the sentiments brought forth by Bersani have a certain appeal from a more mainline perspective of intimacy but ultimately become too dismissive in comparison to the analysis that I am attempting. In other words, it lacks a full recognition of the usefully creative or any acknowledgement of the idea that celebrations of risk can, and do, promote life. My attempt at universalizing the term bugchaser serves as a pushing back against more closed discourses and cultural practices. I am re-contextualizing it against the circumstances beyond, what those who embrace risk would consider, the minutia of a specific behavior. As Dean has elaborated, there is the potential for a communication between generations of queer men in the exchange of unlimited intimacies.[11] Bugchaser then becomes a more complex identity that incorporates elements of memory and time, and an objectivity that includes settings and identities, or counterpublics that would otherwise remain disparate.

After all, suburban barriers seem to merely block the ideas of others. As Dean put it, “I wish to speak about bareback subculture outside the framework provided by the dialectics of identification and disidentification.” Additionally, Dean counters any tendency of “adjudicating the politics of [bugchasing] subculture,” by giving theoretical value to its existence without judgment of right and wrong. In light of this, I have adopted the label as my own, working in line with Susan Sontag’s sentiment, that “there is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera.”[12] Through my process (which will be described in more detail in the following chapter) as the interrogator behind the lens as well as the performer in front, I evoke the bugchaser in all its forms. The result is that I bring the idea of bugchasing out of its dark and closeted status as vernacular and challenge a wider selection of known publics using the bugchaser’s code of openness. The act of bugchasing is much more complex than the simple definition cited above, and it can apply to a vast array of identities than is otherwise allowed for by conventional reason. Bugchaser: Protective Measures demonstrates this point by envisioning the many creative responses to danger, exposing the banality of those employed by suburbia and demonstrating that they are ultimately limited in one way or another.

Chapter Two

Acting as interrogator and performer while still aiming toward a fine art finish requires versatility. My process involves utilizing the post-studio practice of the snapshot aesthetic to explore and sketch out my idea, and then bringing my findings into a more fabricated, fine art experience. The images making up the slideshow, as well as the composite television and computer screens are taken from real-life encounters, from bugchasing social networking websites and from amateur-style bareback porn Very much in the way that Nan Goldin utilized first-hand depictions of her intimate relationships, [Figure 2][13] these images, along with the video work on display, represent the frontlines of my investment into the world of bugchasing. Queer communities of sexual risk rely on these images in identifying one another. They typically depict bodies of various builds and kinds as well as explicit sex acts, drug use, and of course, viral exchange. I have selected my images to engage the audience in the same vein. They are as “real-life” as the community that they depict considers itself. Yet unless you consider escape to be a quality of “real,” somehow real doesn’t quite get at the heart of this work. Unlike Nan Goldin, there are only a handful of images that I actually photographed myself. Most of the imagery is appropriated from bugchasing websites. In comparison to Goldin’s work, these images operate differently with regard to uses of personal imagery and what is considered “community today—because they are exchanged in the context of the Internet. In addition, there is an undoubtedly performative quality to these images. I have not shied away from acknowledging this fact, particularly in my own rendition of performance seen in the video work. I am also exploiting the element of performance within the installation, as I have maintained the integrity of the most common spaces that queer men might normally engage these images—on a computer, in the bedroom.

Fabrication becomes much more apparent not only with the installation of Bugchaser: Protective Measures but also in the still images of suburbia. I make no qualms about my use of high aesthetic or pristine beauty and the means by which I come to those ends. These images attain a similar feel to the work of Gregory Crewdson. They were shot using high definition resolution techniques and edited with the intent to charm the viewer. In both Crewdson’s images and mine, rich color, high contrast, and accessible compositions cater to easy viewing so that the themes become more engaging without distraction. For Crewdson, there often seem to be ulterior motives behind the sublime suburban landscape. His work seduces and then carries the viewer on a narrated journey, most times all within a single image. His message often seems to border on the fantastic with some elements of realism but mostly promoting a dream-like ambiance. [Figure 3][14] Similarly, my images dazzle on the surface in order to deliver a deeper message. The narrative that they conceive does not venture beyond lived, human experience. I depict suburbia from the perspective of various narrators’ perspectives, who each reside within the vicinity of its expanse, but never does it deviate from lived experience in general. That is to say, I am only visualizing as far as what any one person might have actually experienced in relation to suburbia. In addition, I rely on sets of images to contribute to my narrative as opposed to Crewdson’s one.

Although each set does bring forth its own narrative that cannot be pursued without the juxtaposition of each image, and although the narrative is primarily based in lived experience, there is one exception. There is an absurdity in the compositing of queer imagery of bugchasing onto the suburban television or computer screen. This is not because suburbanites do not potentially engage with this type of imagery, but because the images represent the antithesis of what the ideal suburban setting intends. Even though the audience might not have a full awareness of my relationship to these spaces, each interior was shot within the homes of heterosexual families who I have known—either through relations, such as my brother’s living room and my mother’s bedroom—or neighbors I grew up surrounded by. These are not queer people. Evidence of the nuclear family unit comes in the form of a mark, represented by the photos of the residents and their loved ones. Suburbia was supposedly built for people such as these and they carry the torch for suburbia. This is evidenced by the common traits within each home and the repetition found throughout, such as the presence of frames. Frames exist in all of these settings and represent a caging of ideals. An interesting thing happens when frames are observed functioning to capture the residents themselves, such as with the picture frames and mirrors. With other frames, it is as though these homes function to keep anything from the outside world orderly and in check. The most prominent frames are the windows and display screens of televisions and computers. These frames act as portals for witnessing the outside or other world but never to actually engage with it. In fact, it is safe to say that the images I have superimposed onto the screens have never actually been found within those physical settings. While I have put effort into making the composites seamless, it becomes more poignant if the clash of cultures disallows the viewer from believing that the settings were found this way. I want the viewer to question the placement of imagery within domestic, media-based instruments. Why is it there? Why does it not seem to fit? This will provoke an awareness of the artist’s hand. Ultimately, I have marked the intimate spaces of straight suburbanites with the complicit culture of queer bugchasing. I have forced entry into these homes similar to the way that Dean describes that AIDS violated the boundaries of gay men’s bodies at the end of the 20^th century. [Figure 4]

Framing also functions to capture various perspectives, depicting the insidiousness of the suburban landscape, illustrated through the positioning of the six sets of five images within my display. By displaying five unique views and then repeating them through each sequential set, I am bringing to question the premise of a unified perception of the suburban setting. [Figure 5] The positioning of each image within the sets is significant. By utilizing repetition, I establish a sense of purpose for each position. For instance, the first image represents the preciousness and serene beauty of the suburban home. Catherine Opie’s photographic series entitled Houses depicts the lavish houses that make up the landscape of Beverly Hills. [Figure 6][15] Opie has commented on two of her series’ interesting relation to one another. Regarding her houses in relation to her Portraits of human subjects, Opie has stated: “you only have the information of the facade. And the only information you have in the Portraits, too, really, is the facade of the person… Those two bodies of work have a really interesting relationship to each other because they are both about portraiture and perceptions we bring to a given subject. It is still about being an individual but within the construct of community.”[16] By her description, the houses convey a strong sense of identity. Likely, she is exploring the identity of the rich, juxtaposed against the subjects of her other imagery, or the audience. This is significant to my own house portraits as they serve as metaphors for one type of public juxtaposed against various counterpublics. In both our works, various techniques keep the inner contents of the home from the viewer. The composition of Opie’s Houses is set up in order to bring focus onto the entryway. The artist cropped most of the Beverly Hills houses out of the images altogether, which renders a strong sense of scale as well as intrigue through exclusion. I could see Opie’s houses being more representative of the counterpublic of the rich, while the makeup of my images are invested in the vagueness of a larger public. I used an architectural tilt-shift lens to capture the houses of Protective Measures. The effect is a narrowing of the eye to a cropped, horizontal field of vision, invoking a dream-like quality in which the focus is limited to the entrance level of the house. Here, scale functions in an opposite way from the Beverly Hills houses. Instead of enormity, miniaturization functions to create the look of a treasured model, the purpose of which is to depict value as experienced by the burgeoning middle class that occupies the suburbs. At the same time, I am bringing into question the value of objectifying property and rendering it precious. Featuring the entirety of the home also serves to display the remoteness of each property, exploiting the isolation of the suburban lifestyle. Ornamentation and style amongst each home serves as a reminder of the desire for individuality, but these are reminders only of the thinness in attempts at remaining unique and hidden. Each house is surrounded by overwhelming foliage and features an accompanying number, both reminders of conformity—of being restricted by the surrounding, natural environment, or being reduced to a simple number, reminiscent of a larger, much less personal system. The trees also serve as a reminder of suburbia’s failure to successfully coincide with nature. The homes seem to be ineffectively hiding behind the trees while the abundant branches and sky meld into heavy, almost crushing weights. The lawns, driveways and sidewalks become softened and seemingly unable to support the frail, sheepish structures. [Figure 7]

Moving from the portraits of the homes, the rest of the images within each set represent the outskirts and interiors and are most reflective of theories regarding bourgeois understandings of health and disease, formulations of intimacy, and the subsequent power relations that result. Susan Sontag’s, AIDS and its Metaphors is a crucial document that poignantly contributes to an argument made by many contemporary scholars. Historically, systems of power rely on metaphor, not only in response to impending danger, but also as a function for the prevention of it. This leads to a hierarchical conditioning of certain social groups, based on behaviors that are either conducive or detrimental to the overall prolificacy of those in power.[17] Stated in terms of Michael Warner’s discourse on publics and counterpublics this means that the vernacular of the middle class and its suburban setting is based primarily on a treacherous model of health that is protective of heteronormativity and a pro-sterilized way of living. It also means that individuals who do not conform to the rigid, supposedly health-minded controlled public of suburbia are forced out of it by virtue, not of their social identities per se, but of the conditions of their physical bodies (which also might contribute to social status). Disease becomes a justification for the expulsion, or overall exclusion, of individuals from the suburban experience. By focusing on uses of metaphor by the ruling class, Sontag demonstrates the conduit within which this movement occurs. With consideration of Foucault’s analysis of the spatial relations of cellular composition within the body,[18] Sontag explains how medical narratives utilize the vernacular of military strategy and aesthetic judgments of beauty to qualify value. “Underlying some of the moral judgments attached to disease are aesthetic judgments about the beautiful and the ugly, the clean and the unclean, the familiar and the alien or uncanny.”[19]

This explanation serves best in describing the images that reside in the lower left corner of each set of images. These images most pointedly represent the perspective of the suburban pariah. I imagine these images to be from the perspective of a lurking figure that resides in the overgrown, dirt and clutter-filled outskirts, beyond the fences and gates of suburban landscapes. The part of me that took these shots does not feel as though he fits within suburbia in any way. This part of me sees some idea of what suburbia is for some people, or what it is set up to achieve, but it isn’t a place that is accessible other than across a treacherous field of vision. The way that these were shot also elaborates the feeling of exclusion. As the photographer, I was crouched and hidden away from view, as opposed to standing in the middle of the street as I was for the house portraits. [Figure 8] The images in the upper right corner of the sets provoke a similar idea; however, they have been imagined from within suburbia’s borders. The part of me that took these images does, in fact, reside within suburbia but still cannot access the home, which represents the ultimate suburban goal. Vast distances and shrubbery act as the boundaries within these images. These images hold a particular kind of beauty, but it is very controlled, less by the artist, more by the owners of the properties. For these images, it is as though one cannot help but feel the isolation and fear of that suburbia promotes. They express the dictum that you might live here, but don’t get too close. [Figure 9]

All of the images of each set represent the inadequacies of suburbia and the smokescreen that the suburban landscape provides for many. The images central to each set bring forth a more pointed idea of what exactly it is from, which I am suggesting is suburbia shutting itself away. They depict similar interiors as the previously mentioned images, only they are shot through a condom filter. This serves as taking the viewer on in a much more direct fashion. As Sontag points out: “…AIDS is understood in a premodern way, as a disease incurred by people both as individuals and as members of a ‘risk group’—that neutral-sounding, bureaucratic category which also revives the archaic idea of a tainted community that illness has judged[20] As the diseased outsider, going to such extremes as to wear condoms over our entire bodies—it is all that we can do to truly access the most intimate spaces of clean and healthy suburbanites, not through their TVs and computers, but to actually stand there, in the manufactured flesh. [Figure 10]

Chapter Three

The use of seemingly penetrable, one-dimensional surfaces is significant to my work and is most usefully employed through the web, installation, and photographic layout. Requiring the viewer to negotiate space with no promise of a particular outcome beyond the surface is a powerful tool. I have utilized a style similar to Terrence Koh in the sets of images along with the installation and approach to the fluidity between media. The use of web interfacing and the action of appropriately intertwining complex narratives, most notably through installation and performance, is what resonates most through Bugchaser. Koh mixes his media to explore a wide variety of complex themes. His website is itself a work of art. It is paradoxically simple, due to the limited verbal rendering and lack of direction, and complex, because of the seemingly unending amount of distinct visual information and layering. The opening page of Koh’s website features two spinning rabbits, reminiscent of Alice’s plummet and suggestive of the viewer’s forthcoming adventure as they search, with no end, for the answer to this seemingly nonsensical, visual riddle.[21] [Figure 11] Negotiating it is like sequentially opening the doors to a series of rooms. Each room has an exponentially larger number of doors from the last. The deeper you investigate, the more questions arise however it is not as though the endeavor is fruitless. The questions are abundant and contribute to your understanding of the work’s entirety. You desire to learn more, and you are learning more. The virtue of this agnosticism carries the work and eggs the audience on. My use of a variety of media serves as contributing to a progressively more dynamic experience as the viewer explores the installation. Framing, manipulation of space, and the use of both physical and conceptual boundaries all add to the experience.

The contraposition inherent in the relationship between the self and the other world is an essential component to the Bugchaser: Protective Measures series and installation. The sets of images lure the viewer into identification with familiar settings, while the video and installation work subsequently bring forth a reflexive empathy with foreign objects through the juxtapositions of otherwise disparate themes. In other words, I am forcing the viewer to have an empathic experience with the other world through the installation. Michael Warner illustrates many of the failings of the queer community in acknowledging complexity amongst their own personal identities in relation to identity politics. He writes:

…it is also true that sex can be stigmatized, or become a target for phobic reaction, in ways that are not focused on [social or political] kinds of identities. More typically, sex and identity can simply be confused with each other…” “…it is possible to have a concrete sense of being in the same boat with people who may not share your sexual tastes at all—people who have had to survive the penalties of dissent from the norms of straight culture, for reasons that may be as various as the people themselves. (Warner 1999)[22]

Intimacy for one person might simply mean close quarters, while for another it means deviant sex. The installation of Bugchaser: Protective Measures forces the audience to contemplate their own comfort zones in relation to intimacy. How does one, after all, inspire a wide-reaching discourse on the purposeful spread of a lethal disease through sexually deviant behaviors without necessarily offending moderate sensibilities? Also, as stated in the first chapter of this thesis, complicit interpretations of intimacy are not purely the work, or the dilemma, of one sole counterpublic. So the question also becomes, how does one implicate a more diverse public in the causes and symptoms of the given discourse?

Digital photography, video, and the Internet have been utilized to get as close to the corporeal as possible. The writer and noted film scholar, Linda Williams, has described pornography in her essay, Corporealized Observers: Visual Pornographies and the “Carnal Density of Vision,” as “important precisely in their engagement with acute bodily sensations…” She anatomizes the moving pornographic image and its impact on our understanding of what has come to be described by some as the obscene. In short, the author provides a fluid history of pornography with distinct consideration of physicality. Ultimately, Williams develops a case for the relationship between visual language and its ability to penetrate beyond the surface of the given instrument of projection to affect the physical body.[23] It is significant that she focuses on pornographic imagery. Historically, porn has served as a form of representation that caters to desire on the one hand while on the other renders an unsettling effect on certain publics. This is useful to me in my attempt to reach an audience in the most profound way for several reasons.

First, as described previously, my appropriation of stills from pornographic video functions as a mark within the suburban home. Each interior shot features a television or computer screen, found naturally (natural to the occupants) within the setting and suggestive of the desire to experience something outside. The mark I have left is suggestive of provocation beyond the typical primetime series or youtube movie. More specifically, I am asking the viewer to consider these spaces in the same way that they might consider pornography as it pertains to Williams’ formulation—with consideration of the body. What are the corporeal sensations accessible through these devices? Are they transferable throughout the rest of the imagery? In this way, I am complicating the viewer’s senses of comfort and desire.

Furthermore, the use of instrumentation is key to both my installation and Williams’ study. The history that Williams pursues begins with simple, hand-held paper toys and leads to the more contemporary uses of video projection onto a screen. According to Williams, it was partly because of the evolution of such instruments that our understanding of pornography has become so corporeal. I am utilizing the contemporary versions of corporeal instrumentation in both, my depictions of the presented themes and the actual use of those instruments within the installation. The video work and computer slideshow imagery, in conjunction with their installations, function to bring the audiences physical bodies into the work. I have built two 8X8’ booths, wrapped in black fabric and containing a television screen and a one-person, seated bench. The booths suggest intimate spaces such as public video booths and bathhouses that are frequented by men looking for sexual encounters. The benches have been appropriated from the suburban classrooms of the 1950’s, suggestive of a lesson being taught to the pioneering residents of suburbia. The interiors are lit only by the light from the screens and the benches are methodically placed to within a few feet of the front of the televisions. They are situated so that when the viewer enters the booths, they can see only the bench, lit by the light from the screen, but they cannot see the screen itself unless they venture over to sit on the bench. In this way, I am controlling the space so that it becomes difficult for the viewer to have a shared experience with anyone other than the video itself. The purpose is to first bring attention to the viewer’s vicinity to the selected media and to provoke a reaction or decision as to whether or not they will engage with the work fully. That relationship is a sort of forced intimacy. If they so choose, they will find moving imagery of a figure, interacting with condoms depicted through various forms of video technique. [Figure 12]

Koh’s use of the visceral is a significant source of inspiration for my working process here. He lavishly explores and exploits the human body. Even in the shortest-lived visits to his site, one would be hard fetched not to find a flying penis or a reference to bodily fluids or any other anatomical part. His performance work, which is documented sporadically throughout the website, is all bodily. Seldom does Koh incorporate anything besides a mono-colored set, maybe a prop or two, and a key feature—his own body. Insanity and absurdity are captured in Koh’s work through the repetition of movement, and sex is always on the periphery. [Figure 13][24] All of my videos feature a figure (presumably myself, as the artist. It is significant that my body serves as a reminder of the artist’s hand in controlling the environment) repeating the same gestures, over and over again. I am attempting to wear the condoms, on my hands, my feet… anywhere other than where the condom was initially designed to go—on my genitals. In fact, the genitals are never really even acknowledged by the figure other than by simply being present. Similar to Koh, sex and sexuality are lavishly explored here but through indirect means, such as ostentatious (perhaps even irrational) behaviors, in response to objects that are intended to aid in sex acts.

The first video utilizes a layering technique, suggestive of a frenzied state; the second is created by slowing down the timing so that at moments it becomes questionable whether or not it is even a moving image at all. The third video, which is the inaugural piece to this work, is projected on a wall, beyond the booths and the sets of images. Taking from the cues of the central images within each set, it forces the viewer to take on the role of the bugchaser by displaying the condoms being placed over the lens of the camera, while in the background my figure continues to struggle with finding a purpose for the condoms on his hands and feet. This is much more narrative based than the other two videos and has an abstract chronology. It also most effectively ties the still imagery to the rest of the work because in this video, the condoms are not simply being placed on the figure, they are also suggestively being placed on the viewer by a third figure. This figure is mysterious and mostly unseen while continuously putting condoms over the lens. At one point, the shadowy figure is seen leaning in toward the audience in a contentious stare that becomes uncomfortably long. [Figure 1] He is (and I, as the artist, am) challenging the viewer to find meaning in the use of this manufactured skin—if not meaning, then certainly the potential for intimacy.

In terms of the layout, the third video also serves as a domineering presence, overlooking the previously described work, and guiding the audience to the final component of the exhibition, the bedroom installation. Each of the three videos delivers a resonance to be carried with the viewer as they negotiate the rest of the work. Not only will the impact of the video leave a metaphoric trace, the sounds from the video will literally infiltrate the relationship between the viewer and the still image, attempting to create a corporeal experience. The final part of the installation is a separate space that is built to represent a bedroom. A bed resides in the center of the space with a small nightstand, supporting a lamp that is reminiscent of the lamps featured in the interior stills. On the bed is placed a laptop computer, which is placed similar to the television within the booths because it also propositions the viewer to choose between a forced intimacy or not viewing at all. The flashing light from the slideshow reflects off the messed up bedding and beckons the audience into the space so that they can gain a better glimpse at what is being displayed. If they choose to appease their curiosity, they become part of the installation, and based on what they find on the screen, they themselves become a bugchaser. This is the final demand for alterity that Bugchaser: Protective Measures makes on the audience. [Figure 14]

Conclusion

There is no simple dichotomy between suburban dwellers and individuals ostracized by the conventions of suburban life. Protection does not exist purely as a defense against one specific type of invasion. A bugchaser spends his time inventing ways to protect his own autonomy and sense of identity just as the diverse range of suburban inhabitants seeks out protection through their surroundings. I would consider everyone bugchasers in one form or another because harm is not simply a physical threat. I have taken the liberty of metaphor and used it in a small attempt to reverse this notion.

I would like to think that Bugchaser: Protective Measures represents what Susan Sontag implored from her readers:

For the time being, much in the way of [sic] individual experience and social policy depends on the struggle for rhetorical ownership of the illness: how it is possessed, assimilated in argument and in cliché. The age-old, seemingly inexorable process whereby diseases acquire meanings (by coming to stand for the deepest fears) and inflict stigma is always worth challenging, and it does seem to have more limited credibility in the modern world, among people willing to be modern—the process is under surveillance now. With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from these meanings, these metaphors, seems particularly liberating, even consoling. But the metaphors cannot be distanced just by abstaining from them. They have to be exposed, criticized, belabored, used up.[25]

By expecting more from our metaphors, more from our forms of representation, and more from the people who use them we begin to rely more on alterity and less on simplified, vacuous, knee-jerk responses. Harm and risk are unavoidable, as is the need for intimacy, and our metaphors do not have to be exclusive to the power structures of public discourse or limited to the self-defeating actions of people on the fringes. It is my belief that the creative spirit does promote more abundant and inclusive dialogues, as it does with Bugchaser: Protective Measures.

This work will evolve and I will continue to explore the innumerable ways that humans find in expressing the need for contact. I am appreciative of the post-studio mindset that allows for a fluid continuation of themes and practices within Bugchaser: Protective Measures. I will continue to experiment with various uses of metaphor, forming complex questions in the hopes that my work contributes to utilizing, and ultimately breaking down, the boundaries that keep people from discovering creative solutions to dilemmas surrounding intimacy. For me, experience promotes empathy, which in turn allow for creativity, and ultimately understanding.

Illustrations:

Figure 1.

Still from Bugchaser: Protective Measures video, 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 2.

Nan Goldin: Jimmy Paulette + Taboo! In the bathroom, N.Y.C. 1991 © Nan Goldin

Snapshots from pnp (party and play) session, 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 3.

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled from the series 'Twilight', 2001, © Gregory Crewdson

Untitled, 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 4.

Untitled (Suburban Interior with still from the Treasure Island movie, Breeding Mike O’Neil), 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 5.

Installation shot from Bugchaser: Protective Measures 2009 © Scott LaForce

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

House 13, 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 8.

Unreachable House 3, 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 9.

Untitled, 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 10.

TV Scumbag (Shit), 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 11.

Terrence Koh, Asian Punk Boy W O R L D, http://www.asianpunkboy.com/ (accessed 2009)

Figure 12.

Installation shots from, Bugchaser: Protective Measures, Still from Bugchaser: Protective Measures Phase 2 video, 2008 © Scott LaForce

Figure 13.

Terrence Koh, Asian Punk Boy W O R L D, http://www.asianpunkboy.com/ (accessed 2009)

Figure 14.

Continued on next page…

Works Cited

Bersani, Leo. "Is the Rectum a Grave?" In AIDS : cultural analysis, cultural activism, by Douglas Crimp, 197-222. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988.

Bersani, Leo. "Shame on You." In Intimacies, by Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, 31-56. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Dean, Tim. Unlimited intimacy : reflections on the subculture of barebacking. Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago press, 2009.

Dubin, Steven C. "Gay Images and the Social Constructablilty of Acceptability." In Arresting Images, 159-196. New York, NY: Routledge, 1992.

Foucault, Michel. Birth of the Clinic. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York, NY: Tavistock Publications, Ltd., 1973.

Derek. Directed by Isaac Julien. Performed by Derek Jarman. 2008.

Koh, Terrence. Asian Punk Boy W O R L D. http://www.asianpunkboy.com/ (accessed 2009).

Museum, Victoria and Albert. Victoria and Albert Museum. 2009. http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/29134-popup.html (accessed 2009).

Opie, Catherine. Catherine Opie: American Photographer. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. 2009. http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/exhibition_pages/opie/exhibition.html (accessed 2008/2009).

Sontag, Susan. AIDS and its Metaphors. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989.

—. On Photography. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

Traditional Fine Arts Organizations, Inc. Catherine Opie: In and Around Home. 2006. http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa246.htm (accessed 2009).

Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. New York, NY: Zone Books Distributed by MIT Press, 2002.

—. The trouble with normal : sex, politics, and the ethics of queer life. New York, NY: Free Press, 1999.

Watney, Simon. Policing desire : pornography, AIDS, and the media. London: Methuen, 1987.

Williams, Linda. "Corporealized observers: visual pornographies and the "carnal density of vision"." In Fugitive Images: from photography to video, by Patrice Petro, 3-41. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.

Wojnarowicz, David. Close to the Knives. New York, New York: Vintage/Random House Inc., 1991.

—. Memories that smell like gasoline. San Francisco, CA: Artspace Books, 1992.

Yvonne P. Doderer & Authors. Doing Beyond Gender: Strategies and Spaces Beyond Gender Dualism. 2009. http://doingbeyondgender.net/cms/index.php?file=thumbpop&pic=109 (accessed 2009).