Arlene TextaQueen:
We Separate ourselves (Franscesca), and It Could Happen to Anyone (Vanessa), texta drawings, 2007.
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In conversation with Arlene Textaqueen
Texta:
… I like the camera more than the documentarian and it takes me stepping way back or maybe right in to see what I’m doing as more than (objectively) documenting what I see which is the people I ask and choose to draw… But of course the pictures turn out the way they do because its me as the person I am situated as, who I am, meeting who I meet, identifying with who I identify with, and asking them to be the vehicle to illustrate our ideas in naked texta form…
Vanessa:
I know that our particular portraits had the theme of the show in mind, but I cant help but feel that had you asked me to come up with something without there having been any pre-established political undertones, that mine would not have turned out much different… it was representative of so much of what I have been feeling like for the past 5-10 years. It felt natural that it looked just as it did as BOTH a portrait of the person I understand myself to be, in so many ways, and as representative of my concerns for "anyone" living in a similar world as the one I find myself in. And I have been thinking of this show as relating to a "fear culture" of sorts, mine of course being a fear of weakness and dysfunction . . . which is as personal as it is a political analysis, for me.
Francesca:
It makes our case for us; what we create when told to create an image of ourselves and our politic/aesthetic, is what we would create if told to create an image of ourselves, at all… If you live your politics, if your politics is your life, it’s what your life looks like, its your relationship to self, to others, it’s the way you move, the way you act, the way you eat, the way you touch, the way you work. and the same for aesthetics…we exist and act within similar communities, and when we talk about the structures in the world that oppress and repress, we talk about the same structures. So even though our particulars are different, and in some ways they conflict, we can accept this “dissensus” as a basis from which we may enrich our analysis and our methods of action.
Vanessa:
Especially when so many fundamental similarities were actually exposed throughout our discussions of these things… “dissensus”, within our analyses, may only be superficial. You have talked about de-emphasising yourself as an individual because of the ways that any focus on your agency causes you to become self-conscious about making too much of a distinction between yourself and what may be regarded as the “external” . And I have talked about the feelings of alienation from ideas of functionality and productivity and health, because of the ways that I have felt my own individual needs and abilities have been trampled by what I have perceived to be a standard of sorts; because of never feeling “good”. Where you see individuals as all part of something larger than ourselves, I mourn the ways that our individual selves are being over-ridden for the purposes of creating standards that no one seems to fit into. And yet we both agree that our experiences have translated themselves into patterns of self-destruction, wherein the instinct has often been to “fix” oneself instead of something structural or “outside” because, in your case, your individual needs were not as important as being a part of something larger than yourself, and because in my case, the “outside” has always felt so oppressive and alienating that I have only known how to try to beat it by being stronger, rather than trying to work with it.
Franscesca:
We will never be able to expunge our individual selves of all “external” negative influence, because there is no self outside of our context, but if we realise the inherent lack-of-distinction between ourselves, others, and the society at large, we might be able to approach those parts we find destructive and alienating in a more productive way. What I mean is, if we realize how situated we are in the world, how connected we all are, we may form different and more effective approaches to the things that we don’t like about the world and our lives. People around me die in their I-ness. People “I” love feel terrible, and they, because they see themselves as an “I”, try to fix their “I” so they don’t feel terrible anymore, but so often, that doesn’t work. Texta: … I’ve regarded, for a few years, the actual portraits that come into existence as just one little symptom or side effect – and the only public manifestation – of a whole special lucky experience of knowing the people I draw and I share. I don’t feel like we are finally shouting our voices to the world, I mean haven’t we been shouting to each other? and we are the world…