ouroborosivity

"BECOME ONE WITH ETERNITY. OBLITERATE YOUR PERSONALITY. FORGET YOURSELF. SELF DESTRUCT. IT'S THE ONLY WAY OUT.'

2011-09-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

Yayoi Kusama XXX

2011-06-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

STICKERS

What's Eating You? some raw ideas.

2010-02-12T02:52:00.000-08:00

Flesh Styling.

Carnal.

Visceral. Grotesque.

Some quotes I have been finding interesting:

"I started slowly, relishing the flavour and texture of each marvelous bite. Soon I was ripping the meager remains from the bones, stuffing the meat into my mouth as fast as I could detach it... In an animalistic orgy in the dark, on the floor, alone. Here was the horrid truth for (everyone) to see... I had been whoring after food" Cherry Boone O'Neil, Starving for Attention, N.Y, 1982.

"Plato, Augustine, Descartes; provide instructions, rules or models, of how to gain CONTROL over the body, with the ultimate aim of LEARNING TO LIVE WITHOUT IT.

Intellectual independence from the lure of the body's illusions, to become impervious to its distractions, and most important, to kill off its desires and hungers."

Therefore, are restraint based tasks or training schedules in part a way for the mind to place control over the body yet again? It is a fine line then as I was thinking previously that the physical restraints had nothing to do with the mind, but alas, it is the mind that has thought them up in the first place.

How confusing.

Bodybuilding is a restraint put upon the body, by the strength of the mind in the pursuit of a certain type of beauty ideal.

Reminds me of bonsai. in a constant state of pressure against itself, and its environment.

'You Are Not What You Eat' Collaborations.

2010-02-12T02:38:00.000-08:00

Sarah Beetson has kindly invited P.H.A.T. to be involved!

You Are Not What You Eat is in the Adelaide Fringe in Feb, and also part of Melbourne's L'Oreal Fashion Festival in March.

"Sarah Beetson's 3rd solo exhibition explores society's preoccupation with body image and the rising global trend in eating disorders. The show sees Sarah collaborate with several fashion designers to create one-off wearable art, alongside a series of portraits and 100 Body Mass Index Badges made from original art."

unwearable

2010-02-12T02:25:00.000-08:00

resurrecting the term 'wearable art' from its crafty coffin of cross stitched denim shirts and felted gum-nut hats.

how is it unwearable?

Is it hideous, uncomfortable, ill fitting, the wrong size, made not to fit?

Is it just a piece of cloth?

Is it a liquid, a foodstuff, a sound, a thought

i would like to smear my t shirt on

paint my pockets open

wear my body out, style my flesh.

FLESH STYLES.

UNwearables.2

2010-02-12T02:20:00.000-08:00

The Wayward Fold

2009-05-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

photography courtesy of leila koren

revolting to a system, in a system

2009-05-02T23:24:00.000-07:00

"by this i mean, for an alternative project to actually have credence it should be able to function within a system, while revolting to a system, otherwise it is just a idealistic venture that will only work in some kind of utopian fantasy."

therefore PHAT must in a way revolt to the aesthetic system, but still reside in it.

a questionable day of the concept of the alternative, backwards processes and cheese.

2009-05-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

Been mulling over designs for PHAT's self similarity, the more I try to mold my ideas to aesthetically resemble what spill want, the further away from the initial concept of PHAT i dive. The fact that i have the guidelines for the way the end result must look means i am starting the process at the end and really, working backwards.

Usually i would have the system revolving around the possibilities of one template and work against the limitations of that one template. the end result is not nessesarily governed by something as superficial and fleeting as looks, and the beauty of garment is found by manipulation of the template through the whole process from mapping to drape/construction.

I have been thinking that the more abstraction a concept or performance has, the more symbolic it is and therefore the cheesier. (i have an intense disregard for symbolism, which may have stemmed from overkill of it in my catholic school religion classes) If you want to get to the bare roots of something, just one simple idea- but every aspect of that one idea, how do you convey it without superfluos matter? sometimes i think sending brain messages might be the purest way, but then this would cancel out the need to create any thing tangible.

this is how i felt last year- which led me to film, but i soon found out that in the production of the right image for the film i had to create oodles and oodles of objects that post film, became obsolete, glorified only for their history or documentation that a film/performance had taken place.

Thats it then. creation of objects to convey and idea is a silly but unavoidable task.

(nb: not counting the joy in making, the joy in having something as a keepsake etc.)

Its like the creation of work that is anti-art-system, it really must be inserted into the situation it revolts against to actually be able to be contextualised as being different. but then if its being exhibited in the same manner, or abiding by the same guidelines as highbrow art, has it become the very thing it strives not to be? is there no alternative?

Its times like these when i think it would be much more powerful to perform 'standing still with nothing on' and do just that: stand still, with nothing on. but this still does not solve my issue of backwards templates and surface guidelines.

soapy hole

2009-04-20T05:38:00.000-07:00

Its only soap,

I don't suppose an explanation is needed here.

Ever since making this clip I have known there is still more to come. A family of soapy clips, each with their own personality and pizzazz. Possibly a big enough family to focus the next show on.

gooey, innocent, CLEAN, kitchy goodness.

PrettyHot.@ MIXED TAPE Rmit Grad Show, L'Oreal Fashion Festival 2008

2009-04-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

BIDEO!

2009-04-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

P.H.A.T chicks feeding the faces.

P.H.A.T.'s self similarity

2009-04-19T22:51:00.000-07:00

Pretty Hot And Tasty has decided to stop being so self obsessed. well, sort of.

'Self Similarity' is a new endeavor for P.H.A.T which includes the cladding of Spill Collective's four performance artists for their next show at Fed Square in June.

Refusal to call this purely a costume design gig comes from the fact that I am aiming to test the limits of P.H.A.T. ; its far fetching claims that there can be a more organic, conceptually based, processual way of working within the fashion industry.

This project arises more questions for myself:

Are the garments on exhibition, glorifying them as objects? What is the relationship between the performers body and the garment, is one in charge of the other, or is it a mutually beneficial relationship?

what happens to these garments/props after i have made them- the event is not for monetary gain but are the garments sold, hence a commodity?

Can the structural and processual elements of phat work for other projects, is it a valid template for the process of individual design?

The choice to self title my efforts for Spill Collective mean that not only is this a project about the four performances, and reflection of the installations from Spill, but it is also its own separate endeavor for PHAT. It will be interesting to see if the work produced has any connection with the other PHAT projects.

The title, Self Similarity relates to the generation of Fractal Patterns, worlds within worlds.

P.H.A.T. will find self similarity with the work produced in Spill Collective.

P.H.A.T&friends

2008-11-12T23:34:00.000-08:00

P.H.A.T&friends premieres the film PHATpink(buffet) in an all encompassing fashion and food event.

This will be the first of a series of interactive nights where fashion can be experienced intimately (touched, worn, eaten) rather than bought/sold.

P.H.A.T& friends aims towards new curatorial models for the exhibition of garments that do not exist within the accepted fashion system of commercial businesses.

By blurring the lines between art / design and exhibiting garments on real, fleshy bodies,without the hyped spectacle of the catwalk, fashion is finally semi-able to regain its integrity as an art-form.

Or is it(?), I wonder as I watch them all literally devour the delicacies on offer.

after all, the work is still made to be consumed..

ubiquitous mastication

2008-11-12T22:30:00.000-08:00

The Pound of Flesh draws a connection between fashion, consumption and meat: 'a species which is lower in the food chain, but also domesticated and raised for human consumption'*.

I am submerged in an industry flushed daily with a bombardment of mashed culture, imitation, pastiche, thieving: fashion exists as a constantly dissatisfied feeding cycle, the ouroboros. Alike our bodies, it becomes what it eats. Contemporary fashion engulfs itself as what was old is made new; reworked, re-contextualised. Everything created is ultimately destroyed.

Fed by gluttony, this unquenchable hunger we are all caught up in means the very idea of humanity and its race for the newest and the trendiest is inextricably tied up with the process of self consumption.

"through the mouth enters the world to be swallowed up" (Bakhtin, Rabelias & His World)

i eat myself,

and succulently marvel at the plastic joys of hubba bubba and its ability to produce a sea of saliva.

food = body

2008-11-12T21:36:00.000-08:00

Food builds the body.

So, extending upon the previous post, if i was to reference the stripped back, purest body, food would play a huge part.

what is food? isn't it just a bunch of ingredients?

what are ingredients- where do they come from?

the earth.

what makes the earth? decayed life, human bodies.

what constructs the body?

food. and restraint.

"... food's unique ability to 'become' the body that consumes it... it only fully becomes itself (as food opposed to garbage) if it is eaten."

Waskul, D; Vannini, P; 2006; Body/Embodiment: symbolic interaction and the sociology of the body; Ashgate Publishing. p 204-5

Edibles.

2008-11-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

I find myself constantly searching for the beginning of things. Back tracking to where it all began, getting away from unnecessary design lines and busy decorative patterns. But when stripping back design, to show the ease of purity, there is nothing left. when peeling away layers of a chunky dysfunctional garment when does one stop, before reaching the skin?

What is the purest form of garment, the classic?

If all structure, balance lines, sleeves and armholes reflect the contour of our body, then the starting point must be... the body.

the body is the purest form of garment. everything else is copied from its reference points.

What builds the body?

The Chew Process

2008-11-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, (over a year)- sorry blog!

Let me update you on what I have been doing.

These images are 'Glamour Shots' produced for a work in late 2007 entitled 'The Chew Process'. The work is an analysis of the process of creation through a system of restraints -mental, social, emotional and physical. The images produced were a series of glamor shots projecting the narcissism inherently associated with the creation of art (seen as a selfish endeavor purely quenching the thirst of the artist) and the heinous fashion industry...

Garments were built by the body, and in turn, built the body by causing a constant state of restraint on muscles.

This project heralds the start of my pink obsession...

2007-08-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

The infinite journey begins with consumption. Infinite because as long as we travel away from this point we will always end up right back where we started.

cyclicality, unity, infinity.

2007-07-30T07:10:00.002-07:00

"The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of design he was created thus, his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. For the Creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than one which lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take anything or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but the movement suited to his spherical form was assigned to him, being of all the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and intelligence; and he was made to move in the same manner and on the same spot, within his own limits revolving in a circle.