Dekonstruktion von Zweigeschlechtlichkeit - anita.a.mörth

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And recently I just did an exhibition in Prag, which was on manipulation. And 2 years ago I had an
exhibition in Prag on seduction. And only later I realized that seduction and manipulation are two very
important aspects of so called conscious deceptions. And those conscious deceptions belong to the
theory of communication by Jürgen Habermas, a german philosopher. And this entered my mind
unconsciously without reading Jürgen Habermas. Only later when I was getting ready for writing a
text about manipulation I got acquainted with this theory of communication by Habermas. And I
discovered that Habermas actually is talking about seduction at the first place, and then seduction
leads to manipulation. So it looks now as if I was illustrating theory of communication by Habermas
but it came unconsciously. I was not aware of this. But this is to say that it is about mediation.
Seduction, manipulation always includes this second instance which you sort of position yourself
towards or against something. But it is always a dichotomy between, and the binary thing. May be
that is a part of our nature that we just cannot function independently in a kind of isolation but there
always has to be the second part which conditions our thinking.
And when I was teaching at the Gender Studies I hardly used the word Gender, I was trying to avoid
using the word Gender. I was talking about body. And I think the title of the course was 'Of the
perception of the body in contemporary arts' and the starting point of the course was of course the
construction of the public space in Paris in France mid 19th century and the first body was the body of
a female and of course it was Olympia. Then another body was also female, this was the women from
Avignon and then it went down and down. But of course my choice was tenacious because I knew it
was [?] of the Gender Studies. But also Ilija I was teaching not within the Gender Studies and also in
a way - because corresponding with my interests - the notion of the body was important and it is in
fact when you look at the history of contemporary arts it is easier to talk about the evolution of form
using as an example a perception of female body. You can find really a lot of examples to illustrate
the evolution of the form. Not only from the 19th century maybe even earlier. But I could also imagine
that and [?] even out of that gender studies context, I was not kind of inspired or influenced by
anything, nobody gave me any directions, it is my choice, reflection of my interests, it is my
perception of art history, my favourite artworks. But I could imagine, that one, if requested, would be
able to make a similar thing taking male body as an example. So this is something where I don't find
any difference. I was may be more attached to the female body and how the female body was
depicted through the ages or decades of - but maybe bigger challenge would be, may be it is more
difficult of course, it is less obvious but you can do this with - may be this comes from the fact that
female body was more fascinating for artist throughout the ages and therefore you can really find
much more representations of female bodies in books, in the history of art than male body. May be of
course you can say and argue that this reflects the abuse of the female body, may be this is also a
point to say that the art history world was dominated by male artists painting or whatever drawing
female bodies. But then you enter the world of the statistics and this is ridiculous and this is a
paranoia. I think what is the most sensitive within this whole discussion is the necessity or the agency
to give justice. And what is the basis to give a justice to something. You can give justice on the basis
of statistics, votes. Justice in the court is being given on the basis of the voices from the commitee
and then the paternal voice, the most calculable of the charge. But I think that's what feminist gender
studies wants to do, to give a justice. And that's a mistake, which comes out of a sort of obsession of
being underestimated. May be it is a too simplistic statement but I think that this is something which
creates this kind of irritation in the whole discussion, the whole discourse.
A: so it makes us stuck
AB: In a certain sense yes, if you really insist on this aspect of giving a justice to something then you
never gonna continue with this, you always gonna compete. This is about competition. And the
competition is only sometimes healthy, you know, and productive, and mobilizes. But to a large extent
competition is an expression of your weakness. You really want to show that you are the better one.
A: We are all equal?
AB: To a large extent if you, in the majority of cases, if you participate in competition you want to
really prove that you are the best one. Isn't it? You want to prove yourself of course, that's a very
ambitions thing, one part of the whole thing, but the second one is of course that you want to prove,
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