Sunday, May 13, 2007

Do you really want to hurt me?


Ever have one of those days where your brain is so full of thoughts, a constant barrage of ideas and connections that it all feels like too much? I’ll try and walk you through this as coherently as I’m able.

I’m fascinated with the idea of female violence. Kate and I were talking on Friday about our violent impulses. I’m not even sure I can admit to you what went through my head, I could barely tell Kate, but I did. It was weird; it had to do with a crying child and me punching...........it. Okay, I said it. Hate me if you want, judge me, it’s easy to do, I am a little ashamed of it so that shame, it’ll make one vulnerable, anyway, I know I have enough self control not to punch a kid in the face. But I have to think for a moment, about the flash: a sudden, vivid, out-of-the-blue image that was primal and unconscious and made me shudder; and as repellant an image as I found it to be, I have to acknowledge that my brain was responsible for it.

So, I’m kickboxing, most everyday. I think about it all the time. I fall asleep imagining combos, I shadow box to the mirror to study my form, I spar twice a week. I have a bruise on the bridge of my nose from where I keep getting hit. One of my sparring partners popped my cherry – gave me my first full-on, free-flowing nosebleed. I pissed a few people off yesterday, literally not aware of my own growing strength -kneed a girl in the gut so that she couldn’t breath for a good long while, punched a pro fighter in the head so hard she came right back and gored my kidney with a sharp left hook. Violence. I choose to submit to it on a daily basis. But, it is controlled, it is a meditation, it has rules, it is not the biting, scratching chaos of a street fight. It is not the murderous assault of a psycho killer, but it is, nonetheless, violence.

My therapist tells me my eyes light up when I talk about boxing. There are probably only 2 other things in the world that excite me as much.

I learn so much from boxing; its parallels to life are absurd they’re so obvious:


Getting angry gets you nowhere.
Hit too hard expect to get hit back harder.
Escalation isn’t wise.
Observe, consider, and strategise before you act.
Be daring but not reckless.

You get the point.

I watched Lady Vengeance last night. A film by, Park Chan-Woo, also the director of Old Boy, another really excellent, twisted film. Lady Vengeance has dodgy spots, but for the most part is a pretty rare and special story. I would rather you find it and watch it then tell you too much. Anyway, the brutality, particular to female sensibilities, seemed expertly depicted. There is a particularity to female violence, see any case study of female serial killers and you’ll see how their pathology is always essentially female. Even the way women commit suicide is particular to women – we tend to kill ourselves in clean ways, private ways, with overdoses or poisonings, usually with the thought of sparing those who will find us (
or so I’ve read from the experts who study such things). Men are more brazen, less considerate, choosing guns first and hanging second, not at all concerned with the aftermath of their decision.

So, the creative culmination of such unresolved ideas is, of course, a photograph. Above is an early exploration of ours into this idea, but Kate and I have long flirted with the idea of The Tableau and at dinner, last Friday, after my shameful admission, we toyed with the idea of a new photo project depicting some manifestation of female violence. Not aggression, not hysteria, not masculine emulation, but a specific, essential feminine ferocity. Something physical, not necessarily psychological, something powerful and empowered but not political per se. How to capture it all in a picture? Not sure yet, but we’ll figure it out.

Camilla

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