Monday, April 9, 2012

Horses, Girls and Agency


Subcultures serve as private places for girls where they can momentarily escape gender-related expectations in acceptable ways.  “Riding horses is a popular hobby for young girls,” explains Karolina Ojanen, who has studied girls’ horse riding, and argues that the culture created around it enables girls to establish a space that they can themselves control and master. Girls not only ride horses, they spend their time collectively in stables, feeding, grooming, and taking care of horses. They develop power hierarchies and social norms such as codes for how to dress and what to talk about. Simultaneously as these practices build on, sustain, and even confirm traditional gendered categories, they also offer the possibility to vary and modify them, and to use them in rehearsing agency in the group.



The terms ‘stable girl’ and ‘horse girl’ are commonly to describe girls who ride horses. Also, the expressions “be mad about horses” and “horse-crazed” are typical when girls’ horse-related subcultures are described. Although the popularity of ‘stable girl’ culture seems to be mainly a North European phenomenon, little girls’ fondness for horses is more widespread. For example, Seiter notes in her analysis of My Little Pony, a popular toy from the 90s, that the company got the idea for the product by asking little girls, “‘What do you see when you go to bed and close your eyes?’, and the answer was often ‘Horses’” (Ellen Seiter, “Sold Seperatly: Parents and Children in Consumer Culture,” 1995).



Play is also the medium of mastery, indeed of creation, of ourselves as human actors. Without the capacity to formulate other social scenes in imagination there can be little force to a sense of self, little agency...Through play our fancied selves become material. (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, “Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds,” 1998).



*Anna Pauliina Rainio, Horses, Girls, and Agency: Gender in Play Pedagogy, Outlines, No. 1, 2009

The Lie in the Void


Is nostalgia “the lie in the void,” as declared by Peter Carroll in an attempt to confuse remembering with escapism and nostalgia with amnesia? What if, as argued by Roberta Rubenstein, what is remembered “never actually existed, or never could have existed, in the form in which it is ‘remembered?’” If, according to Jonathan Steinwand, “the imagination is encouraged to gloss over forgetfulness in order to fashion a more aesthetically complete and satisfying recollection of what is longed for,” then is nostalgia a legitimate act of memory? In defense of nostalgia as an authentic approach to perceptions about the self in the present and directions for action and thought in the future. Both private and public memories rely on nostalgic remembrance for the creation of personal and social identities as well as internal and collective meaning.

Rubenstein describes nostalgia as “an absence that continues to occupy a palpable emotional space” and argues that “the felt ab- sence of a person or place assumes form and occupies imaginative space as a presence that may come to possess an individual.”  Rubenstein’s description qualifies the “painful awareness” of nostalgia as mel-ancholic while simultaneously describing nostalgia as a response to “universal inevitability of separation and loss” and “the existential condition of adulthood.”  As opposed to the spatial or geographical separation of homesickness, nostalgia according to Rubenstein reflects a temporal dilemma.

"One can never truly return to original home of childhood, since it exists mostly as a place in the imagination. Although the meaning of nostalgia itself has changed over time, essentially it has come to signify not simply the loss of one’s childhood home but the loss of childhood itself." 
- Rubenstein 2001

Whether nostalgic images lie in the mind, in objects such as photographs, or in objectless media such as film, the premise of absence is necessary for reflection and reinterpretation to emerge.

The film Nostalgia (1971) by photographer and filmmaker Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) is a powerful document of cultural memory that articulates and demonstrates vital issues of memory, such as the use of autobiographical film, to explicate identity formation and the intricate relationship of photography and film to absence, memory and meaning.  It is precisely what Rubenstein calls “the presence of absence” that makes nostalgia pertinent to my discussion of film and particularly Hollis Frampton’s film (Nostalgia). Through the treatment of photographs as malleable objects that are ritualistically destroyed on film, Frampton’s avant-garde film addresses the decay and destruction of image and memory. Here, story-telling serves as a preservative for memory that accompanies a visual transition from the private to the public.




"Art is a lie which makes you realize the truth."
~ Pablo Picasso ~


*Shira Segal, From the Private to the Public: Photography, Film, and the Transmission of Cultural Memory in Hollis Frampton’s Nostalgia35-54



Sunday, April 8, 2012

Horse People

Images I've found that demonstrate the same sense of equine obsession and convey the sense of nostalgia I'm exploring.

Credit: GETkrisiLOVE

Credit: tenth48

Credit: Deirdré Straughan

Credit: Suzanne Ouellettte


"Girls and Horses," Templeton Thompson

Well she talks about 'em
Dreams about 'em
Thinks about 'em all the time
She's got to have 'em
Be lost without 'em
You can see it in her eyes
What is it, what is with girls and horses

She says, now when I was a young girl
They were my whole world
They were my one safe place
And now that I'm older
I still lean on their shoulders
Still feel like that girl somedays
 What is it, what is it with girls and horses

Sometimes I wanna give up
Throw up my hands and say enough's enough
That's when I go and saddle up
 And runaway, 'til I'm ok
'Til I'm not afraid of stayin' in the game
Maybe that's what it is 
With girls and horses

Well I talk about 'em
And I dream about 'em
Live to love 'em
And I love to ride
I'll always have 'em
Be lost without 'em
There's magic in those gentle eyes
What is it, what is it with girls and horses
What is it, what is it with girls and horses


If Wishes Were Horses


Many girls have experienced an infatuation with the horse. This romance takes many forms, from early play, through fantasy and desire, and perhaps to the act of riding.  The horse, a symbol of beauty, power, freedom and magic, can be an object of identification or serve as a protector.  The girl's favorite possessions surround her, including a plastic horse collection, horse show ribbons, saddle, and her diary. The bedroom is a shrine to the horse, and is evidence of girls' search for self-definition.


Tackling what exactly the appeal of ponies really is, while powerfully conveying her passion for them, Susannah Forrest has written a beautiful book about her own equine obsession, while casting her eye over the role horses have played in popular culture. Opening with descriptions of her Falabella obsession, and of anxieties she had as a child that she might grow too tall to ride a Derby winner, you quickly know you’re in the hands of a true addict.

Weaving affectionate memories of ponies she has loved and lost, Forrest is most concerned with the role it played from the Industrial Revolution onwards, although she takes the reader on a brisk canter across the centuries, pointing out horse meat was a staple part of Stone Age man’s diet, but that it wasn’t until the Renaissance that equestrianism took on significance as a literary form.

Forrest isn’t joking when she subtitles the book an equine obsession, because her descriptions of the ponies who have trotted into her life are dedicated and lengthy. More compelling for the general reader is her examination of why young girls, in particular, love ponies so much.  The golden age of girls and ponies was born in the early 20th century when horses were to give girls an independence that was quite new. It was during the First World War that women tasted, in large numbers, the intoxicating independence experienced from the back of a horse; their brothers and fathers and husbands away, upper-class women in particular developed a taste for riding astride to hounds with the same bravery as their male counterparts, and perhaps a bit more skill.

By the Thirties and Forties, horses and ponies had won their place within the hearts and minds of little girls. A whole literary genre grew up around them, started by Muriel Wace, writing under the name Golden Gorse, who declared “There is no greater pleasure in the world than riding a good horse.”
The Pony Club was born in 1929, and by the mid-Thirties, every girl in the country had a crush on National Velvet, the eponymous heroine of Edith Bagnold’s novel, immortalised by Elizabeth Taylor on screen. A thirst for novels with names like Silver Snaffles grew; Joanna Cannan was one of the finest of these writers, although the horsey heroine without equal was undoubtedly the show jumper Pat Smythe, who travelled the world with her horses, combining an unequalled equine talent with an appetite for adventure and glamour.
This truly was a golden age of riding, but so potent was the power of those ponies that by the end of that century, a government drugs adviser identified “equine addiction syndrome.”  Horses, she writes, once “gave girls a corner of the world where they were freed from the burden of being ‘girls’, where they could be ambitious and brave and strong.”

~The unique roles ponies can play in the lives of girls to make them feel strong and independent~

One of the most interesting sections relates to work by the Swedish psychologist Sven Forsling, who set up a rehabilitation centre for truanting girls who’d fallen into drug abuse and sexual exploitation. It had a racing stables, where the girls were expected to look after their own horses, which made them feel brave. The strongest evidence of this comes from one of these girls, who, racing her horse around the track for the first time, declared “Yes! I am divine!”



*Susanna Forrest, If Wishes Were Horses: An Equine Obsession
 *Clover Stroud, The Telegraph, March 2012

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Janet Biggs

I was a "horsey girl."  It started with my first pony ride, grew to drawings coving all my notebooks, and settled into riding every afternoon and weekend.  I was hooked from the fist nicker, the first flowing mane and soft muzzle.  The realization that at an age when decisions were usually made by others, I could experience freedom and control from the back of a twelve hundred-pund animal confirmed my "horsey girl" status.  Even when classmates moved their seats away from me in response to the manure clinging to my shoes, I thought it would last forever.

Somewhere after Lytle Nell and Canadian Blue, after Pony Club and high school, I stopped riding.  My time was spent with art school, then career goals.  Eighteen years later I found myself at a riding academy, scouting a site to shoot my next video.  Within half an hour I was astride a chestnut gelding, taking a lesson.  I now spend most mornings at the barn and consider it an extension of my studio.  I still don't know if that first video piece was a natural progression in my artistic exploration of female identity, or just a need to get back in the saddle.  Whichever, the following images are of video installations by a "horsey girl." (Janet Biggs, Girls and Horses, nine-channel video installation, 1996)

*Janet Biggs, Horsey Girl, Horse People: Writers and Artists on the Horses They Love, Artisan, 1998


This exhibition examines girls' relationships with horses, exploring issues of power, sexuality and autonomy.



Many girls have experienced an infatuation with the horse. This romance takes many forms, from early play, through fantasy and desire, and perhaps to the act of riding.


The horse, a symbol of beauty, power, freedom and magic, can be an object of identification or serve as a protector.





"The ability to control an animal so much bigger than herself gave her a sense of awe and wonderful power. It was, however, not only gratifying in a physical sense; the caring for, riding, and showing of the horse also represented the mastery of a world that was completely mysterious to the uninitiated."
John E. Schowalter from the essay "Some Meanings of Being a Horsewoman," Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 1983, Vol. 38.



We Wear the Mask



After watching Ingmar Bergman's Persona (Sweden, 1966) we were asked to create a response to the film drawing from the styles of cinematographer Sven Nykvist and Bergman's direction.  Long held to be among the world's greatest filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman shaped international art cinema from the 1950s to the 1980s. Among his many works, Persona is often considered to be his masterpiece and is often described as one of the central works of Modernism.



In reflection of the film I focused on the scene where the head doctor speaks to the stage actress Elisabet (portrayed by Liv Ullmann) who fell silent during a performance and subsequently remains mute.  The head doctor talks about understanding why Elisabet has chosen to withdraw from her world, and deals with her choices by remaining mute.

For the project I took images of myself upon waking, early in the morning before the sun came up - when I'm not yet engaged in the days onslaught of thoughts, worries, or lists of things to do.  I attempted to portray the 'truth' of myself, but alas each image is quite performative.  I was trying to reveal what was behind the mask - the mask of makeup, the mask of clothing, the mask of facial expressions, like my ever worn smile.

I came upon the lyrical poem We Wear the Mask (1896) by Black American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, a work that represented the silence black Americans for forced to hide behind in a facade of happiness and contentment in regards to the oppression experienced.  Line 8 through 9 - "Nay, let them only see us, while/We wear the mask" became inspiration for my title "Let Them See Us."

We Wear the Mask

    We wear the mask that grins and lies,
    It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
    This debt we pay to human guile;
    With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
    And mouth with myriad subtleties.
    Why should the world be over-wise,
    In counting all our tears and sighs?
    Nay, let them only see us, while
            We wear the mask.
    We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
    To thee from tortured souls arise.
    We sing, but oh the clay is vile
    Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
    But let the world dream otherwise,
            We wear the mask!




The Cowboy


In the mid-1970s, Prince was an aspiring painter who earned a living by clipping articles from magazines for staff writers at Time-Life Inc. What remained at the end of the day were the advertisements, featuring gleaming luxury goods and impossibly perfect models; both fascinated and repulsed by these ubiquitous images, the artist began rephotographing them, using a repertoire of strategies (such as blurring, cropping, and enlarging) to intensify their original artifice. In so doing, Prince undermined the seeming naturalness and inevitability of the images, revealing them as hallucinatory fictions of society's desires.
Untitled (Cowboy) is a high point of the artist's ongoing deconstruction of an American archetype as old as the first trailblazers and as timely as then-outgoing president Ronald Reagan. Prince's picture is a copy (the photograph) of a copy (the advertisement) of a myth (the cowboy). Perpetually disappearing into the sunset, this lone ranger is also a convincing stand-in for the artist himself, endlessly chasing the meaning behind surfaces. Created in the fade-out of a decade devoted to materialism and illusion, Untitled (Cowboy) is, in the largest sense, a meditation on an entire culture's continuing attraction to spectacle over lived experience.
*The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2000.272

Untitled (Cowboy), 1997-98

Untitled (Cowboy), 1995

Silhouette Cowboy, 1998-99

Untitled (Cowboy), 1980 - 84