JAWBREAKER SEASON 2, EPISODE 3:

THE GROTESQUE AND THE GUTWRENCHING

A DEEP DIVE INTO THE WORLDS OF PAUL MCCARTHY AND REBECCA GOYETTE

Transcription:

Georgia Tooke: Okay! Weeeee’re…. not live!

GT: So, hello! Welcome to or welcome back to our JAWBREAKER series, Jiggle n Juice’s JAWBREAKER series. I’m Georgia Tooke and this is my beautiful ride or die, Shae Myles. I’m here in Canada and Shae’s in Scotland, but one day we’ll be together again! Before we jump into this episode, I just wanna talk about the changes we’ve made because JAWBREAKERS is looking a lil different this time! It’s had a lil ~glow up~!

Shae Myles: Oh yeah!!! I think we definitely need to just talk about our glow up bc it’s something that we… that deserves [to be talked about]. 

GT: Well, this has kinda been, sorta in the back of our mind, in the works, for quite some time now. Bc I’ve been wanting to have a podcast component, Shae’s been wanting to have a transcribed component, and so for season 1 last year, the reason why we were just doing IG Live was bc it was the easiest thing to do, we didn’t have to do any post production. It was film, post to IGTV - set it forget it. And then in Season 2, we started using our website a lot more, we wanted to upload it to YouTube to put it on the website, and Shae has been taking the time to transcribe every episode. So we were like, we’re putting in more effort now to post production, we might as well take it al the way and get proper microphones so we can do a proper podcast version so you can now: listen, watch and read it! So whatever you’re comfortable with!! And also just change the format a lil bit!

SM: I think, yeah, this series fuckin deserves it tho, like I love doing this, and I think we’ve got loads of amazing episode ideas in the works this year, so why not just do it now! We started this just for fun, and then it’s become something… well we used to do it twice a month, and now we do it monthly, so why not invest in making it the best we can!!

GT: Yeah! Exactly!! I feel like, it started as just you and I really enjoying talking about art, and art related topics, and I feel like it’s really just grown from then. So we should grow with it!!

SM: Fully! I agree!!! Um, so we haven’t even addressed what the title of this episode is, you’ll probably just see it in the title below, so the title of the episode is - The Grotesque and The Gutwrenching: A deep dive into the worlds of Paul McCarthy and Rebecca Goyette. So, we, I guess… OH! We should talk about that too!

GT: Yeah! Oh what this ol’ thing?!! 

SM: Just a side note! Yeah, we are hoping to maybe like bring a lil bit more ~costuming~ on the JB series.. We thought, if you’re familiar with Paul McCarthy’s work anyway, you’ll know that he uses condiments, which we’ll get into. And we thought it would be funny if we were like, also we both use food in our practices, so it would be cute if we were inspired by such condiments. So today I am modelling Heinz ketchup realness, and then Georgia is over there with her beautiful mayo vibes. 

GT: Yes, exactly! I mean… costume?? What are you talking about? This is real..!?

SM: Oh no, this is all real girl, this is all real!!! 

GT: Yeah we’ll get into that in a moment.

SM: Yeah! So I think, we wanted to talk about Paul McCarthy for a while. I’ve been a stan for the longest time, and I know you have too Georgia. And we were kinda thinking, we’ve had some feedback in the past that people like our compare and contrast artist episodes. So we were thinking… who tf is comparable to Paul McCarthy!! We genuinely were like… we were gonna put this on the back burner and then, for my fourth year research I stumbled upon Rebecca Goyette by accident, and I fell in love. I think at the time I shared that with you as well, and I was like “girl look at this!!!” and I don’t think that you looked into it as much as you maybe have now, bc you weren’t like a proper stan. So I feel like, I was looking through my sketchbooks to be like “who would be comparable? and who could be an interesting person to critique alongside Paul McCarthy”, and I was like !!! this is it! This is the only person! So yeah! We’re gonna dive into the works and the worlds of these two amazing artists. 

GT: But also, if anyone else knows any other artists who work in this sort of way, please let us know. Bc when we were first like “let’s find out who’s similar to Paul McCarthy” our search really turned up nothing bc every time google was like “did you mean Paul MCCARTNEY???” … 

SM: Noooo!!

GT: No! No we didn’t. So yeah, if anyone knows any other artists that work in this distinct way, please let us know!

SM: Comment below!!

GT: Yes! So let’s start with Paul McCarthy, bc he’s definitely more well known, well definitely, I don’t think. He is more well known. So do you wanna start off with a lil bit about the man of the hour?

SM: Yeahhh!!! Yeah, so. Kinda like an overview of his practice, he plays on popular illusions and cultural myths. So things like fantasy and the distortion of reality, and also has this really repulsive, but in our opinion, delicious exploration of the subconscious and themes surrounding that kind of vibe. He utilises the human figure a lot in his work, it is a constant. That’s through his performances, so either using his own body, his own figure, or different characters that he creates. What they challenge and portray, is the challenging of our fundamental beliefs and the way we think the world works, Paul McCarthy will take it, spin it on its head, and shit it out! As we have heard!

GT: In a literal sense sometimes!!

SM: In a literal sense!! Yeah, so he often plays with really oversized characters and objects, so he’ll kinda take everything to the very very very extreme, and in terms of character, they’ll usually critique the world from which he’s drawn them. So whether that’s Hollywood, politics, science or TV… it’s always go big or go home with Paul McCarthy.

GT: Well he takes larger than life characters and people, like when he had dressed up as George Bush, the Queen of England, and Osama Bin Laden in Piccadilly Circus, like he takes these larger than life people, and enlarges them even more to play on the comedy of that. And his whole thing is bringing the high, low. Bringing high art, low. Bringing high class, low. Bringing good taste into nothingness! 

SM: Yeah fully! Like, that’s something that is really amazing about his work that you really just kinda… you don’t really know what to do with it. When you see something that makes you feel like that, you really don’t know what to do with it. I think that’s a massive part of his work as well, is being like, wtf am i supposed to think here?! There was a point where I really didn’t know if I should like this.. am I supposed … is this something I’m supposed to like? Is this something I’m supposed to relate to? And the answer is definitely up to you! You might not like his work at all, you might think it’s actually fuckin vile, and then challenging that notion is the whole point. He doesn’t make something pretty to put on a wall. Another thing that is really interesting about him as well, is he acts like a kid in his work, so he kinda descends into these food flinging frenzies where he’s going mental with the food or with his medium that working with in that specific video. He also works primarily with video, sculpture and performance, I didn’t mention that before. So yeah it’s usually about analysing existence and whether that’s existence within yourself as an individual or whether that’s a society-based expression of existence. That is something that he really plays with quite a lot and when I’m talking about him acting like a kind, he’s being really playful, and has these weird kind of voices and makes these weird noises and stuff. His obvious adultness, the way he looks as a man, even when he was in his 20s doing performance works in the 70s, he was a rugged, tall, burly dude!! So your perception of him as a person, but then the way he actually acts and the things he does in his videos are just so kinda unsettling. The way he acts like this kid, and I think that that challenged the perception and myths around the innocence of childhood and the fact that maybe its not all like, roses and sunshine and rainbows…. that’s not necessarily what everyone’s childhood is like. And yeah so he also taps into consumerism and sex as well which is one of the things that first drew [me to him], bc I was obviously doing a lot of research into things like psychosexual analysis and things like that. So something that I found interesting was his take on consumerism especially though the use of food, and his comments on that. And he uses… off of that, he uses food in this really sort of refined context and in a really refined condition, that is so amazingly planned but seems so spontaneous. So food as we see it, is something that sustains us, and something that we don’t really think about very much, it’s a daily thing, but then when you take food into a societal context, there’s things like, you know, eroticised food ads, and cookbook style sex books, that’s the way that sometimes this parallel does exist. But McCarthy takes the ways that we’re used to seeing and dealing with food and just smears it all in our face, and it’s just a massive fuck you to society I guess.

GT: Yeah, definitely!!! I feel like there’s so much more that we’re gonna unpack with food, but we wanna do it in comparison with Rebecca Goyette, so we’re gonna put a pin in that as well, bc there’s just so much there. But I feel like, enough of us talking just for a minute!! With this new way we’re doin things, we want to show you some of his work, and so we’re just gonna show the first minute of, I think our absolute favourite video ever, put on by HENI Talks, and it’s just this art critic named Robert Storr, who talks about Paul McCarthy, and talks about him in such a way that… just with such a reverence. I feel like you can’t watch this video and not be swayed to be like “how could i NOT be so intrigued by Paul McCarthy!!” You don’t have to like him by any means, but you want to know more. 

SM: This guy is a Paul McCarthy STAN!!! You know when you.. like for example, when you hear me talk about Doja Cat… I feel like when you have a passion for somebody or someone’s craft, and you speak about it so passionately, it doesn’t matter if you fuckin don’t like them, I think that is exuded onto you, and this guy!!! He loooooves Paul McCarthy, and is one of the main people that helped me to contextualise my understanding of his work, so… love this dude.

GT: Love him… we are obviously gonna link the video down below. I think it’s a 15 minute video, but it goes by in a second. Just don’t eat it when you’re eating your lunch. I just tried to do that one time and it didn’t go well. So I’m gonna screen share. 

~Video here! - https://henitalks.com/talks/paul-mccarthy/ (we played the first minute :)

SM: I love that we paused on that, bc I fuckin love that work!!!

GT: Oh it’s so good!

SM: I think that video just.. we kinda wanted to show that bc it’s all well and good us just rambling on about things, and obviously you can do your own research, but I just think that video give such a good insight to somebody who’s maybe not familiar with his work as to what it looks like, this is what we’re on about. I think to have it all in quick succession like that, is so amazing, I love that lil reel. 

GT: Yeah totally!! It just has such a range of work, and he’s obviously been a working artist for decades now. So we could go on to talk a lil bit about two of the works that we’ve selected. I know that you were just chatting about him, but I’m curious, why did you pick Sailor’s Meat, made in 1975, of all the works to talk about?

SM: So I picked Sailor’s Meat bc it was one of the first ones I ever looked into from his body of work. And I remember just feeling so.. idk it just made me feel something that art has never made me feel, and it was not in good way. And at the time I really didn’t know what to do about that, i was kinda like.. I feel like at art school I was very much like… not told what to like, but there was definitely something around “this is who to look at, this is your shortlist of people that we’re gonna reference to you” but the art world is just so much more than that. And when I came across Paul McCarthy, that was by myself, I think it was one of the first people that I actually.. I kinda felt a lil bit.. dirty.. idk!!! It was sitting in bed looking at these images and I was just kinda like this is so vile!!! And then I was like “okaieeee I kinda like that! Maybe I want to make work that’s gross and makes people uncomfortable.” Since then he’s influenced my work on so many levels, and he’s kinda helped abolish my idea of aesthetic. So I’m working on a series now called “amateur” which I’ve posted two short films onto my insta, where I just shoot them on my phone, they’re one take, and that was very much inspired by him. The fact that… people messaged me, the first one I was sucking milk out of a carton, and people messaged me and they were like “this is not for instagram, this is so mingin… so gross!!!” and I was like FUCK YEAH!! This is Paul McCarthy livin through me!!! And so yeah, I picked this piece bc it was the first piece that I saw of his, or that I researched into… I can’t fuckin find the actual video. 

GT: Oh I know, I looked for so long, trying to find any sort of clip from that video. I feel like you talking about how that made you feel for the first time, and it makes me think of this one piece that I know I’ve told you about a million times, so I still can’t stop thinking about it, but this one video piece that I saw when I was across the pond once upon a time. It stuck with me for so long, I thought about it constantly after I first saw it bc it was just so disturbing and repulsive. I feel like when art can make you feel like that, I think the most memorable emotion you can feel. Like above anger, above beauty, above awe, and wonder… and so that’s what the Paul McCarthy video that we keep talking about and stanning, he talks about your gut. The whole point of Paul McCarthy’s work is to ~feel~ something in your gut. Not take into consideration of like, how should I feel, how should I approach this in an institutionalised or an academic sense… it’s like, no!!! All that goes out the window, how do you FEEL!! What’s your first response? Do you want to go and puke in the corner? Do you want to laugh out loud, or look away or shudder and completely walk out the room? How do you feel in your gut? What is your first and primal instinct. I think that is such an amazing pocket of what art can do, and how it can make you access different parts of yourself.

SM: And the funny thing is, I was never taught that. That was never a discussion that I had with anyone, whether that was my peers, u know, minus you, or my tutors, like that was never something that was raised in lectures and seminars in my art school education, and I just think that that’s just something that is so interesting that that just gets completely bypassed. The fact that it is something that is completely personal and that’s the point.

GT: Yeah, totally! And that’s the success in it, really. 

SM: Anyways, let’s talk about Sailor’s Meat… do you wanna talk about it?

GT: About which one sorry?

SM: Sailor’s Meat. We didn’t actually talk about what it was.

GT: Oh yeah, guess we could do that!! So Sailor’s Meat, it emphasises the contingent nature of the erotic, and it actually kinda just talks about exactly what you and I were just saying, how seeing something that’s so out of context, that it’s really jarring for the viewer to see. So he takes these everyday banal foods to desexualise the performance, but still acting in a very explicit, sexual [way], which then render the same food disgusting. So you’re kinda at this back and forth of like “oh I put ketchup and mayo on my burger”, but then he’s like rubbing it all over his body, and all of a sudden, you’re like “I never want to put those foods in my mouth ever again.” And so it’s this weird duality back and forth. And so, there’s this quote, I think it so perfectly sums this um, it’s so perfectly put, is: “sexuality where i does not belong is problematic because it constitutes a violation of the expected social arrangement.” 

SM: Likeeee… that is so perfect. 

GT: Totally!!! And that’s why you feel so violated, you’re like, that’s shouldn’t be there!!! That shouldn’t be there!!! This is not what I signed up for when I went to go and look at this work!! 

SM: I just also think the idea of an ~expected social arrangement~… like those words together is so interesting to me. The fact that that exists, that that is something that actually exists and that we are part of and he challenges that. It’s so amazing.

GT: Yeah totally! Let’s talk about one more Paul McCarthy work and then I want to move on to Rebecca Goyette, who I just recently fell in love with!! So, we chose the 1992 Props Series, as our other Paul McCarthy work to chat about, so this is where he photographed many of the toys and masks that he had used in earlier performances and videos. These masks are dense with the dirt and grime and food and scuffs, and are just so gross, from all of the performances that he was doing. And of course, Paul McCarthy doesn’t work small, there’s these massive colossal heads and props and everything, and it encapsulates two decades worth of work. And this just forces adult fantasies about childhood into conflict with truly childish behaviours. It’s like finding your old toys that are completely out of context. Things that were so light and innocent, of like a child playing with food and they get it in their Barbie’s hair, but then that Barbie gets lost under the bed, and then all of a sudden, years later, you pull it out and its like :{ It’s like a different context looking back on that! It’s .. idk it can be an interesting experience.

SM: Yeah no totally, that comparison is so interesting because it not only takes you back to a time when you were playing with this Barbie, but you’re kinda thinking about the way we play, and the notions of play, and playfulness in adulthood, that is so interesting to me, and that’s something that he does tap into. So I think that the Prop Series… I would love to see that irl. I think that would be so cool to see, and I wonder if he displays them on plinths, or whether they were behind like glass or something? I wonder how it was actually exhibited, bc that would also add to it as well. Whether you could smell them, or what they would feel like… and also if they were behind glass, it would be kinda almost like a museum vitrine or something. It would just be really interesting to see how preciously he preserves them. 

GT: Yeah!! I would loooove to go to a Paul McCarthy retrospective!!!

SM: I know!! Why did we not think to fuckin put him in our March Mini Series? 

GT: Well bc I was thinking like, idk if I want to sell my soul to the devil… like go to a Paul McCarthy exhibit and then go directly to hell. Like, I just don’t know… oh no, I was saying bc I wanted to stumble upon it. I didn’t want to be actively like “okay I’m going” like I would love to just be somewhere and be like “omg I didn’t know this was happening!!” And just come upon it. But then also be there for a weekend. Idk if I could take in his life’s work in one day. I feel like that would be ~too much.~

SM: I think that would be insane. That is different for sure, it would be an experience, but maybe not and ~experience~ you know? 

GT: Yeah, I think I’d want to take a week!

SM: Yeah fully!!!

GT: Go for a day, digest. Go for another day, digest. 

SM: Yeah I feel like you could send so much time in the space of his work. I think that would just be insane. 

GT: Like, yes and no. But bc, they were saying in that video how it’s impossible to look at, but impossible to look away. 

SM: Right!! So whether you would never want to eat again, and just feel so sick you’d leave. But I think I would just be so… bc I’m so invested in him and bc I love him so much, I think I would be able to push that to the side. I would be there all day!!! 

GT: Yeah totally!! So… tbd… hopefully we’ll go see Paul McCarthy!!


SM: Anyone wanna PayPal us some money for flights….

GT: For whenever we can fly again!

SM: Yeaaahhh that’s true :( 

GT: Ummm… moving on! I’m just so happy that you showed me Rebecca Goyette. 

SM: You are so welcome !!! 

GT: But I’m like… Shae and I were talking about how when we first were introduced to Marina Abramovic, and we were just like literally heart eye emoji… like starstruck for this woman, and now I’m like… Rebecca Goyette !!!

SM: I feel like with Marina though, I was walking around with heart eye emojis for like a good two years after… I would just not shut the f up about that woman and her work. I feel like it’s the same vibe with Rebecca Goyette, but kinda different bc… taboo!!! I hate that!! I fuckin hate that ~taboo~ like why is there such a thing as taboo anymore. You know? If it’s… anyway, that’s a side note. Maybe we should do a JB on taboo….

GT: *gasp*… that could be good…

SM: “Tantalising Taboo.”

GT: Oooooo. Write it down. Um… okay!!! So Rebecca Goyette. She’s a multi-disciplinary artist and she combines video, performance, costuming, ceramics, sculpture, drawing and painting in her practice. 

SM: She’s a wonder woman!!! 

GT: Wonder woman!! And I feel like with… something that I find so inspiring with her, is how fluidly she moves in between her different disciplines. She’ll kinda have a concept or an idea, and she will draw it, she’ll paint it, she’ll build props and then make a video and then use the props, and then when she installs the whole thing, have everything installed together. Like it all just influences one another, and just creates such a full and rich picture of the concept she’s exploring.

SM: And that’s something that you have struggled with in the past. You know, making this hierarchy of your work, and things that you’re like “yo I’m a video artist!!!” but then you’re like “I kinda wanna make like set stuff!!” and then I’m like, well make set stuff!! And you’re like “yeah but I’m a video artist!!!” And I’m like “girl you’re an artist!!! Like do whatever the f you want!!” And I’m really glad that that shone through for you because it’s something that we’ve talked about many times before, and I know that you’re getting better and it is something that you need to try and dismantle bc you can be all!!! 

GT: Yeah definitely, I’m like “I’m an interdisciplinary artist except there’s clearly something that’s more important than the other things…’

SM: Yeah thats another thing, is that your emphasis on ~importance~ of one medium, and it’s just like… no matter what you’re doing, everything that you’re making is important. And that goes for all of our viewers out there, if you’re artists, everything is important, even if you’re doing sketches on Procreate, mate that’s fuckin part of your practice, don’t discredit yourself!!!

GT: Yeah! Exactly, everything influences one another. Even if you do drawings but they don’t end up in the same exhibition as your sculptures, they still are relevant to one another. So anyway, I love that about her so, so that’s what I wanna do. Anyway so, what she does in her work though, her work really reflects on fantasy and fulfilment from a feminist perspective!!! Alliteration :p So she explores power dynamics and oppression inherent in gender and sexuality. She celebrates sex positivity through a comedic lens. Which is so beautiful!

SM: Literally so perfect for me, like when I found her, I was like “this is ME!!! this is what I wanna do!!!” I love the parallels of my practice with hers, and she’s one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to the work that I do exploring sex bc she does it in such an amazing way and takes inspiration from porn and just her whole practice and all of her beliefs are just like so, yeah, perfect!!

GT: Perfection!!! And yeah, I appreciate a comedic lens. Working through comedy, because obviously, as we all know, the art world is so serious and there’s such an important place for serious work, and you are kinda told that you’re not gonna be taken seriously if your work isn’t serious. And seeing serious work is… just such a bummer, there’s enough shit going on in the world, it’s nice to have a work that can make you laugh and, there’s just such an important part of that, and there is absolutely a place for humorous work. More people should be making humorous work, in my opinion. So, that being said though, celebrating sex positivity through a comedic lens, while simultaneously examining the psychology of sexual violence, so again with a duality here. Don’t wanna overuse the word, but it’s just so good.

SM: The duality of the violent undertones… it kinda makes it more real. So yes, she’s got this very comedic, humorous take, but she’s being real, she’s being authentic and honest and raw, and that is something that… there’s a lot of things you can’t explore without exploring something else. So there’s no way to possibly explore the beauty of sex and the pleasure elements, without exploring things that are more hard-hitting and more raw and real, and the reality of those themes. So yeah, fully.

GT: And like, comedy can just be comedy. It can just be humorous, and that’s totally fine. But often times, comedy is used as an entry point. A point of accessibility, to be like “ok, I’ve laughed at this work, I’m here, I’m with you, I get you!!!” And then hits you with something that’s deeper, and can be trickier to access on it’s own, and now she’s like drawn you in, and you’re like “oh…. now I’m thinking about more things.” Anways, so, Rebecca Goyette, we wanted to mention she has lectured at MoMA, and The Met, and The Pratt Institute, she’s a professor… idk if she is right now, but she… is? I think she’s currently a professor at the Pratt Institute?

SM: From what I saw on… she still works there. Yes. Like, I want her as my lecturer!!! I’ve never had a female lecturer :( 

GT: Wait what?! 

SM: We’ve talked about this!!

GT: Well… that’s not very good lmao… guess we’ll just move on. That’s an… issue?!

SM: Yeah I know!!! It’s a big issue!!

GT: You didn’t have any female tutors in your entire time at art school?

SM: The only female contact that I had was with techs, like technicians, and then I had the pleasure of having Jen Clarke as my dissertation supervisor… that’s it. 

GT: That’s honestly insane to me.. anyways, let’s talk about that some more later!!! But yeah, would love to have her as a professor. And also, last year she led a series of adult education workshops called “Maker’s Magic” that focussed on the intersections between art making, sexuality, and ritual?!!! I wanna do that!!! 

SM: When I found out that she did this course, I went straight away, and was like… is this still happening???!!! It’s not. But, I would like to sign up, subscribe and turn on the button for notifications, bc if she EVER is doing “Maker’s Magic” again, I will be there, front row, even if it’s on Zoom.

GT: Yeah same! Same same same same. Anyways, so I just wanna read this, I won’t even pretend that I’m saying this and not reading it, bc this language is so good. But, “her work reflects her penchant for bizarro Americana, through the lens of improvisational alter egos.” 

SM: We are just obsessed with the term “bizarro Americana,” like I went through a big ~suburbia~ phase, I feel like we all went through a ~tumblr, suburbia~ phase, but like I’m still obsessed with that whole aesthetic. The word “bizarro Americana” just screeeeams drive-through, night life, kitschy, ugly kitschy stuff.. and I just think “bizarro Americana” is the most incredible thematic reference ever, and I wish that I was American or lived in America so that I could be like “I’m gonna steal this, and do this.”

GT: Okay, like yes, but also… ew America.. I don’t wanna do that. 

SM: Yeah no I know, as soon as I said it, I was like, no, I’ll just come to Canada instead. 

GT: Yeah, America has some great things, like don’t get me wrong. 

SM: But…

GT: Anyways, so, speaking of how we were saying that she uses a comedic lens to get to something darker, or more serious, she also says that because she works so much with sex and sexuality, she says that “sex is one gateway into the rich territory of psychology + human interaction into the remotest ranges of the subconscious.” And so again, I just feel like her work is so rich bc she uses these tools that are instantly recognisable to us, like sex and humour, to dive into something so much deeper. So her persona-based works look at the queer/fantasy paradigm, and her work highlights sexual desires and challenges pornography playfully by proving women’s desires are way more vulgar, strange and sexy than male geared porn ever depicted.

SM: So, again, I think that was either taken from her website, or someone else wrote that about her work, but we just wanted to read it and quote it bc it is basically the most incredible thing ever. We obviously talk a lot about sex together, just that’s an important thing to discuss, and I just think the whole… I have a big issue with porn, just in general. That sounds like… I’m not a porn addict, I’m saying that I have an issue with porn, like I do not like porn.. just a disclaimer!!! I guess, so I forgot what I was going to say, but basically porn is male-dominated. In that it’s made for porn…. I just can’t stop thinking about the fact that I basically just said that I have a porn addiction. I don not. It is geared for men. It’s typically made by men, for men. And the way that women’s sexuality is explored, like yeah it’s getting a bit better you know, you’ve got Erica Lust and all that shit, so it’s good, that those kind of spaces exist, and women’s pleasure, non-binary folk, trans people, there’s a lot more happening. But as a structured thing, porn is for men, by men, and the things that women are into, and the things that women want to see, just aren’t shown, and there’s a lot of terrible terrible porn out there, and the fact that she really harnesses that and is very aware of that and addresses that in her work, is so inspiring to me. A lot of her videos are very much like watching porn, but not… bc they’re so wild and she has these amazing costumes, which we’ll get into when we talk about a couple of different examples, but yeah, just her focus on porn and challenging that is so amazing, and something that I just love so much. Bc there’s not very many works like that.

GT: I feel like on that note, male centred porn is normally mainly about penetrative sex, where… can we talk about this on YouTube?? I think we can?

SM: I’m sure we can.. we’re not monetised or anything!!!!

GT: But yeah, male centred porn, primarily is just penetrative sex and that’s kinda the main event of it all, and sex for women, non-binary, trans people, in that umbrella, is so much more complex and there’s just like… what’s so special about sex is everything around sex, and I feel like that is a perfect way to go into Rebecca’s work. We have a couple works that we want to talk about, the first one is called Lobstapus/Lobstapussy. Made in 2013.

SM: So this is my favourite piece EVAAA!!!

GT: Is it??!!! My favourite piece is Crustacean Temptation!!! Which we’ll get to in a sec. 

SM: I also love that one too!! I forgot which one is my favourite!!!!!!

GT: If this is your fave work, how about you talk about this one?!

SM: Ummmm, sure!! So basically, this work was made in 2013, it’s a video piece, roughly 20 minutes long right?

GT: Mmhmm!! 

SM: So Rebecca shot this work when she was on a residency on the uninhabited Greek island of Meropi, so she was doing a residency and was basically just like, gonna get some talent, some of the local talent, and filmed this amazing video. So basically Goyette is the main character, she features in all of her works, but in most of them she is the main character. There’s a lot of other people involved on screen too, but her role was ‘pushy American,’ and basically this character … she created a travel sex film in the vein of the TV American TV classic Gilligan’s Island, which neither of us have seen, if you’re familiar with it, I think it’s a show from the 60s or smth, and so there’s this quintessential ginger, hyper sexualised young movie star, and in this video she taps into that stereotype. I’m just gonna read, this is the description of the plot from her website, bc it is just fuckin hilarious. Reading this on its own?? Like!!! You don’t even have to watch the video, you get a sense for the video. So it says: “Lobsta Girl voyaged, hoping to explore hot Greek lobsta men in double dick speedos, instead fell for an eight-dicked Octopus stud, and came home to New York City pregnant. Giving birth to a lobstapus baby, aided by bisexual dolas performing orgasmic water birth in a buttah bath, Lobsta Girl reminisced on her Greek lobsta and octopus erotic Odyssey.”…. Let’s all take a moment, for that. 

GT: omg!!!

SM: SO, if you haven’t guessed already… this is basically a porno. But so much more intricate and characterised and rich and real…. even though it’s with.. lobsters. So like.. what do you wanna say about this bc I … can’t. I have no words.

GT: So the first thing I wanna say is that Rebecca Goyette has blessed us with putting almost all of her full-length films on her website. So we can link her website, you can actually go and watch the whole 20 minute video should you so desire, of Lobstapus/Lobstapussy.

SM: And like, that never happens man!!! When do you actually, unless you’re a student [or emerging artist], when do you actually have full access to their whole library of video work?! So easily accessible too, it’s all in the same place! 

GT: Yeah, like never! We were just saying that we can’t find any full length works from Paul McCarthy. Fortunately there’s so much on him, and so you can kinda get a sense, so definitely take advantage of that incase one day she changes her mind and takes them down! But, yeah I just think people need to see this work. It’s so funny, I loved it, I just watched it this morning, the whole thing!

SM: Yeah, it’s definitely something that, like as an introduction… this is the first piece I saw by her, and as an introduction it really gives you a good landscape to be like “ok now I know what I’m in for and I’m gonna binge watch them all!!!” But then I also wanted to talk about works that weren’t … bc she obviously doesn’t just do video, so I also wanted to talk about Fortuna’s Wheel, which is a series from 2019, and it’s a drawing series. She had an exhibition that was all about this, and she had sculptures, and I think probably some moving image works, but mainly sculptures and drawings.. and some paintings as well. She basically, in 2018/2019, she discovered that she was the direct ancestor of Rebecca Nurse, which was a woman who was hanged as a Salem witch, and so she’s been exploring notions and different aspects of witchcraft in her practice which is kinda something different to what she was doing prior to that. So Fortuna’s Wheel is basically a series of coloured pencil drawings that explore witchcraft, but they also have her typical erotic musings. Things about family histories, and also time travel as well. They’re really such playful drawings, I love her drawings and paintings, I do love this series but her other ones as well, there’s one that I put in my sketchbook where it was just basically this massive orgy and like, we’ll see if I can find it. It’s like this massive orgy, just people sucking dick, and it’s just so amazing that she’s like “fuck yeah!! i wanna draw this” and she draws it!! I just love that!!

GT: It was such a freedom in both her and Paul McCarhty’s work too, just they do what they wanna do! Okay, I wanna talk about Crustacean Temptation!!! So this was made in 2019, it was created in Berlin. Like, Lobstapus/Lopstapussy, this work has a bunch of other people involved in it, and so she actually cast most of her crew that she worked with, on tinder! So this film is an experimental travel sex video, follows a group  of Berlin’s art and music club/LGBTQ kink scenesters, and they were invited into a co-created space of a lobster sexual adventure, where Goyette’s sadomastochistic lobster labia avatar embraces it all. So Goyette remarks: “When strangers come together to perform in an orgiastic pleasure-centred way, the chance for surprise chemistry and a co-created fantasy space can develop, and that shared fantasy asserted itself into the public space of Berlin.” So I feel like this goes exactly back to this point of non-male pornography, where there’s this… I love the word orgiastic, pleasure-centred way. Like there’s just so much around it, and I can’t even really describe it, we’re gonna play a little clip of this video so you can get an idea of it. But before that, I’ll just finish reading what she has to say about it and then we’ll cut to the video. “An act of psychological exploration of intimacy between strangers reveals touch, desire, and the sexual gaze can extend beyond one’s own preferences, beyond social constructs of monogamy and monoliths such as heteronormativity and the social graces of public space. The Berlin lobsta porn stars created their own rules, and their games were playful, gender-bending, and radical.”

SM: So, you’ll see when we show you, this film was filmed during the day, she probably picked a fuckin Saturday or Sunday, like a weekend day, when she knew that folk would be out and about. She filmed this in public, like this is real, and it is basically just this massive orgy, gender does not matter, it’s just about sex, it’s just about intimacy, and bodies, and people!! It’s just so fuckin weird, but I love it so much!

GT: Yes! Same, so without further ado!

SM: Let’s see!!! 

***Cut to: 12:48 (we watched about a minute) https://www.rebeccagoyette.com/work/crustacean 

SM: So, can I just first of all point out, the lady with the binoculars!!! With the tiny fuckin binoculars!!!! Omg I was crying at that when I first watched!!

GT: Like the fact it’s the tiny binoculars, but right beside her it’s a lady eating her lunch on a paper plate.

SM: Omgggg!!! 

GT: So good!!

SM: When I first watched this, I was like this is insane, I’ve never seen a video like this, that then showcases the public’s reaction. She edited that in, you know! She made that conscious choice to edit that in, and I just think that’s so funny, it adds so much to the piece. It’s just wild. In terms of the actual context of the video and what they’re doing, you can see that they’re simulating sex. They are fully clothes, but they’re thrusting and rubbing each other, and obviously making these fuckin noises!! So it’s kinda taking this private intimate act into the public realm. The fact that they’re not having sex… so I was thinking to myself, would the police have been called? Like if this was in Scotland or the UK or something, would this have been a criminal offence to actually be doing this. And I was thinking to myself, they’re not actually having sex?! There’s no dicks out, there’s no nudity… it’s just suggestive, and makes you feel… I just wonder what those people thought when they saw this, and also just the fact like, when you watch it it makes you feel like ~uuugh~ I’m just watching porn in public, but at the same time… you’re not?! Bc they literally are fully clothed and they’re acting. 

GT: Yeah, I know, I feel like it just pulls the melding of public and private and intimate acts that are explicit but also…  I mean, you said innocent, idk if we could call it innocent. But it’s not like..

SM: Of course it’s innocent! There’s no penetration!! There’s no clits and fuckin balls n stuff!! It is completely innocent, they’re just acting!! 

GT: ….okay…

SM: No??

GT: Idk if you could… if you were like, a mother with your kid out for a walk, that  you could just be like “oh that’s innocent!”

SM: No, I don’t think I mean …

GT: Oh they’re just having fun, they’re just playing.

SM: Okayyy…

GT: I mean, like, I love it! 

SM: We can just agree to disagree on that. That’s so funny you think that!! There’s also another scene that I wanna … wait were you gonna say something?

GT: Oh, no I just.. I feel like we’ve been talking for so long, but also I’m like…

SM: It’s fine!!! I’m okay, I’m fine with this!! 

GT: Okay!!

SM: There’s another scene that I wanna talk about where it’s towards the end, and so the women, all of the crustacean women are lined up, and then the crustacean mean with their.. you didn’t really see it in that shot  there, but if you watch it back, you’ll see that the costumes have dicks, really long pink dicks sewn onto their fronts. And so all the women are standing in a row and they’re suggestively putting on lipstick and it slowly becomes more and more smeared on their faces, and they’re making all these noises and being all like “oooooo” and touching their bodies, and there’s a bush in between the line of men and women, this bush that separates them, and the guys are just jerking off, and they end up like… oh idk.. idk if I can say.. they used whipped cream at the end to simulate… the end. So it is explicit, but when you actually think about what’s happening, it’s just entirely not explicit. But when you watch it, you’re like… what!!! tf!!! 

GT: Like it’s explicit, but like it’s not real. 

SM: Well yeah!!

GT: I think that’s where we want to draw the line.

SM: Yeah!

GT: So I think, time to compare contrast, talk about the overall context, and them together.

SM: I feel like.. yeah, I think maybe we should… I’m just conscious of this episode being super long, so maybe we could just like, whiz through this and this can kinda.. if you want to make any conclusions or have any final thoughts, yeah maybe voice them at this point as well. 

GT: Yeah, let’s whiz through this, I like that! Okay so!!! I mean a lot of this says what we’ve already said, so this can kinda be like a recap of the episode. Like the purpose of the work is to evoke a primitive response, whether that be again, nausea, laughing out loud, repulsion, intrigue, curiosity. And it plays with human taboos and the idea of taste. Good taste, bad taste, and McCarthy sets out to eradicate taste altogether. And yeah, so when they said that… bc our bff Robert Storr from the HENI talks, he says that “to get past taste, is to get past bad taste, because bad taste has been institutionalised, too.” And I thought that was really interesting because I feel like, taste is something we all kinda talk about and sort of have agreed upon, but not something that I’ve personally looked too far into, so I just looked a lil bit into ~taste~ and i found that taste is defined as an individual’s personal, cultural and aesthetic patterns of choice and preference. But to kinda bring it back to our last episode, which talked alot about how there’s a lot of wealth and class and those sorts of advantages in the art world. Like they are so obvious in the art world, and so I feel like taste and class really go hand in hand, and people in positions of power, whether that’s with their wealth or political or celebrity influence, or in an academic sense, those are the ones who generally get to define what “good taste” and “bad taste” is. And that is how taste has been institutionalised. Like you see Louis Vuitton puts out a fancy hardback and that’s “good taste” and people who are rich have the Louis Vuitton bag, but then when a lower class person goes and buys a knockoff Louis Vuitton from like a lil pop-up shop in a market, all of a sudden it’s like tacky, and fake and “bad taste.” That’s exactly what Paul McCarthy, why he feels it’s so important to abolish taste altogether, bc he’s very critical of these structures of how people in positions of power get to dictate what is good and what is bad. And so, Paul McCarthy, he… any money that he gets from his work, he puts directly back into his work. He does so in a way where he, to quote Robert Storr again, he takes the dirty art world money, and he figuratively and literally shits it out. He’s like… “what could I spend $2 million on? Just to take the piss out of the art world?” And so, one of his works, like he obviously is all about working large scale, and he makes this massive blow-up sculpture, and it’s called tree. But’s it’s actually just a big green butt plug. 

SM: He also has done that thing where he had a chocolatier in a gallery, and they did like hundreds of thousands of chocolate butt plugs, as a comment on consumerism, as a comment on shitting out the money of the art world. Like that in itself, is so funny to me, and soooo stupid, and just like, if I was to see that without any context, I would be like, this is terrible art. I’d be like “I fuckin hate this!!! How dare the art world do me like this!!?” But knowing him, and knowing his practice, and knowing that everything he makes, he just churns back into the art world in something more ludicrous, more of a commentary, it just makes me sooooo…. obsessed with him!!

GT: Yeah!!! Totally!! I’m just looking through this, and i just feel like we’ve said a lot of this stuff already before.

~cutttts to Shae the day after filming~

SM: Hi guys, so we just realised that we didn’t actually talk about the significance of us being dressed as “ketchup” and “mayo,” we just completely forgot to actually mention it, but basically, the symbolism comes from Paul McCarthy’s work, and he uses, in a lot of his work, these banal everyday condiments like mayo and ketchup… he sometimes uses mustard and stuff like that. To resemble… certain… bodily fluids. So it’s a massive part of his work! Just in general, and yes, we didn’t actually explain that… we said we were going to, but just didn’t. So thats, just the explanation for our outfits bc we actually didn’t even tell you. Back to the video!!!

SM: Something that I just wanna say, kinda like a note to, I guess other emerging artists but also students as well, in terms of bad taste and good taste… It took me a really long time to actually realise that, like I know I’ve said this already, art doesn’t have to be pretty. You know? For a long long time I really disregarded a lot of works, bc they didn’t fit my ~aesthetic~ or they looked kinda ugly, or I didn’t like that specific colour.. like I was very much that for pretty much my whole art school career, until maybe fourth year, when I really started to actually question, why am I not giving this work the time of day. And I think that that’s something that you should… it’s so institutionalised, and if you’re going to art school, fuck that! Don’t limit yourself to the artists that people give you or that you are exposed to at art school, that you learn about at art school. Expand your horizons in way that challenges yourself. If you had put Rebecca Goyette’s or Paul McCarthy’s work in front of me, sat me down with no context, two years ago, I would have been like “this is fuckin trash, I can’t believe I’m watching this.” I think that really understanding the whole idea of taste and things that are grotesque, things that are gut-wrenching… that is still… to have a response, like a visceral response, and a personal response… that is just so much more powerful than work that you just think ~looks nice.~ I just think that’s the main thing that I really wanted to get across in this, bc I just really hope that if you came to this episode, if you saw the title and were like “omg Paul McCarthy!!! I can’t stand it, I don’t get it, idk what the fuss is all about,” I really hope that, at least on a contextual level, you’ll maybe just appreciate it and maybe want to kinda find out more, or come up with your own conclusions!!! Let us know!!! Comment below and tell us what you think of these pieces!! If you disagree with us? Fuck yeah!! Tell us why, this is the whole point!! Discursive discussions that we wanna have and engage with.

GT: Yeah absolutely, you do not have to agree with us at all! On any of this, and we would love to hear why! Like that’s, I feel like this was kinda funny, I was telling Shae this, earlier, how I feel like we’re very critical on this series, and so I feel like this is the first time that you and I have just absolutely STANNED!! To spend like an hour… we just got lovee!!! But yeah, that was the most beautiful closing notes, Shae!! Like I love that, I completely agree with you, and I think everyone should go and make something that’s ugly, and make something that maybe scares them. Go and like, get out of your comfort zone!!!

SM: Make something that’s ugly and then tag us on instagram and we might do another mini series called: Your Ugly Art. 

GT: :o Yes. I think we could do a whole JB on ugly art. 

SM: I would love to do that!! Comment below if you wanna see that!! Also, follow us on instagram, bc we do mini series, and also as another sidetone, this is genuinely how we do come up with all of our ideas. Like it’ll just be a stupid thing that one of us has said, and the other one is like “should we do this!!” So the way that that just played out in real time. That’s it baby!!

GT: Yeah!!! Thank you everyone for just… idk I usually say thanks for coming but we’re not live. But also thank you for being here! 

SM: Omg absolutely!! 

GT: Like, comment, subscribe!! 

SM: !!! Turn on the lil bell notification to get notified every time we bloody post!!

GT: I know we’re really excited about this, dk if you can tell!!

SM: I feel like YouTuber has been my calling since I was about eight years old, so share this video with your art friends, share this video with your non art friends… share it with your … I was gonna say mum, but I feel like we talked about a lot of interesting things that maybe your mum might not be interested in. But my mum would be interested in them so, fuck it!! Share it with your mum, share it with your granny. Talk about sex, talk about gross things, challenge yourself, challenge your practice, challenge your notions of art if you’re not a practicing artist, and also don’t forget to like and subscribe!!!

GT: Amazing!!! Thank you so much everyone, we will see you next time!!!

SM: Thanks boizzzz!!! 

GT: Byeeee!!!!