It's been a while since I experienced a sense of visual awe. You know, when you get sucked into a work, when it's big or bright or complex or sexy, and you stand a little transfixed for a while before you go to the bar. I got that a bit when I saw Bianca Baldi's Him&Her at blank projects. The show consisted of a small red Euro car in the tiny gallery, an obvious logistical nightmare, with a couple of actors in the back seat in a constant state of second base. It really strikes you: shiny car and intimate acts all behind this enormous window, like a reverse drive-in. Beyond the striking aspects, the drive-in is one of the biggest clues to interpreting the piece, both in terms of the screen and cinematic, and the drive-in's connotation of acceptable sexual romance, the back seat.

I'll be the first to admit my theory of the cinema and sex could be a little shaky, but let's try this on.
Cinematic eroticism and romance, even in contemporary film or especially, plays into the male gaze. Essentially, the elevation of women into objects subjugates the males' fear of castration. By making a women into something visually pleasurable it accentuates the difference between men and women, supporting a process by which men retain control sexually, socially and culturally. In cinema, it is further enhanced by the experience being voyeuristic, where the viewer maintains control of the gaze(you can read a bit about it here, if you can wade through the text). Obviously there are holes in this theory, such as the role of female or homosexual viewers of film, but it serves to note that film watching can be a highly sexualised and controlling act. In Him&Her it takes on a whole new layer, when -to a degree- the process is reversed. If you take the drive-in metaphor, we feel a bit like we are on the screen, the actors, except the audience, the real actors, are engaged in their own erotic experience, ignoring us completely. The reversal makes us feel uneasy, very aware of our own scopophilia.

On the other hand, this sense of criticality starts to collapse, when viewed without the constraints of the cinema metaphor. As a grand romantic gesture, a hetero-normative, phallocentric edge creeps in. The concept of romance, especially acceptable and public romance, is a sanitised sexuality. Romance is a fictionalisation of sexual relationships, in a way that priveleges straight men. It teaches women how to be demur, non-threatening (by pushing forward non-genital forms of sexual interaction, kissing, etc) and how to relate to men. Essentially, romance is one of the ways that sexual norms are transmitted through the generations.

What appears dirty on the surface, is in fact a cleansed act, happy like advertising. While not necessarily a bad thing, and while still being an erotic and mucky voyeuristic show, art has the potential to muddy things rather than package them.

Update: Their There is a finisage and video screening at blank next Thursday (25th)