Friday, 19 June 2009
The one about Princess Margaret
Place: New York City Time: 1965
An auto-ethnography/auto-biography/auto-ephemera audio/visual production that describes its creator as a member of a culture at a specific time and place: being queer in 1965 on one night in New York City at a famous (straight) mod nightclub, “Arthur”.
Themes include being different, the celebration of being an outsider, seeing oneself from outside of the “norm”, and the interior conflicts of “coming out” within a continuum as a (gay) male in a straight world. These observations are set within the flux and instability of a period of great social change, but which are often viewed in retrospect as consistent and definable. Being straight or being gay can also be viewed in a similar way within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture.
As auto-ephemera, it documents minor transient personal moments of everyday life: something transitory, lasting a day. Through the device of the fleeting moment, the story interrogates the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity.
'The one about Princess Margaret'
The script for the video is available. An article about how the video came to be, "How Did I Get to Princess Margaret? (And How Did I Get Her to the World Wide Web?)" is also available. See also: Exploring Online Methods at Leicester University and Ethnography And The Internet: An Exploration
Great story was told to me after I had presented at Keele. In turns out this guy received his PhD from Princess Margaret (who was patron or something at the uni). She had a guy who followed her around with a silver ashtray and gin flask on a silver platter!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great image show, Kip, and your summary of your work and how you see it adds an interesting interpretive component to your artistic efforts.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I love the silver ashtry and gin flask bit. Doesn't the past seem the place to be! ;-)
Jeffrey