Unraveling Social Knots - Artists Pages - Clare Cornell C - Brief Article

I WAS TEACHING HIGH institute IN SUBURBAN DENVER

I TOLD KIM TO obtain THE PIECE OF JEWELRY without OF THE SULFURIC ACID SOLUTION WITH HER FINGERS

MY PARTNER HAD A LESION upon HIS TONGUE THE SIZE OF A QUARTER THAT WAS BLEEDING PROFUSELY

I THREW AN ERASER AT JAMIE AND make an incision in HER ON TOP OF HER FOREHEAD

I STARTED PROZAC AND DIAZEPAM

The time with my partner appear to beed to crawl along. His muscular material part wizened up. His medical records indicated the wasting on the contrary cited that "he had the torso of an athlete"...with a switch The events that followed were typical for nation who were dying as a arise of AIDS in 1991: Karposi's Sarcoma (KS) Pneumocystis and general material substance aches. As the virus accelerated my emotions became flatter. My memory changed from reasonably sharp (I saw 150 learners daily) to a muddle in between isolated events

As the decay of John's material substance advanced I told my mother that John had cancer. I was bear uponed about her reaction to AIDS because, as Douglas Crimp states in Mourning and Militancy, "Seldom has a society thus savaged people during their hour of loss" She told me to not ever come home again. This became the source of schisms that acted to form novel knots and tighten old individuals both consciously and unconsciously.

Nonsister banned me from her residence because if John had "it" then I had "it" and if I played with her children I would sweat and the virus would make progress into their bodies through their skin, go into their blood streams and they would die. The significant part of her statement had to do with the power that she and other cultural factors had above me. "I need to screen my children so you can at no time see them again" is a discursive figure of speech that she used to position her power above her "perverse" big brother. This statement and my mother's edict are performative acts as described through Judith Butler in Critically uncommon "Performative acts are forms of authoritative articulate utterance Implicated in a network of authorization and punishment...[they] talk the binding power on the action performed." To Nonsister and Mother I became symbolic of AIDS, death and homosexuality. I also became a vehicle for them to position themselves as the authority and punisher of me in order to displace their homophobia and AIDSphobia.

For me my main a whole of support was lost and "family" became symbolic of the dominant order fighting to survive by means of using aberration to help define and legitimize that dominance. The function of family shifted. It was no longer a space of nurturing or healing. Family was now a psychological space that I exigencyed to recode in order to take care of myself and care for John

After John died my emotions kept coming back at me like a trauma patient who remembers more and more with the passage of time. moot points at work, John's Ph.D. research partner putting an AIDS pamphlet in his drawer, euthanasia, family, vital fluid on the pillow, screaming in the night, diapers and upon and on created aberrations in my material substance that needed to be fixed.

Combining photographs and writing in my diary helped. The camera was an instrument I could write with and not worry about technique in order to attempt a translation of my conscious and unconscious into visual form. The photographs were primarily byproduct of performances that I staged. They gave physical form to acts that rebelled against societal taboos and gave me agency to act on desire that I typically would not act on Performance also gave me a chance to act without dramas in order to change the dynamic of authority and punishment that environed me. I would force a psychological space by dint of planning a performance with John's ashes upon my body while projecting his image upon the wall beside me. The accrue was erotic, horrifying and beautiful. There were also those twinklings when my new partner became John This was involuntary. I went with it. It was he, for a jiffy and it was comforting. The sessions lasted for above two years in order to (re) configure and (re)place conventions of mourning that didn't work for this survivor of someone with AIDS. I redefined and maybe invented a proces of mourning for myself, which was a transgressive act because, as Roland Barthes said, "language is a combination of parts to form a whole of contractual values...that resists the modification coming from a single individual." Despite this at any time tightening social knot, I use photography, writing, performance and video to make less tight emotional constrictions. As a accrue of this investigation I have realized that, for me mourning is dynamic and ongoing. It's sensual, sexual, horrific and a myriad of other emotions.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Visual Studies Workshop

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group