Brief Exchange

Of course you can exchange

Boxing Day brought so much joy for The Artswipe in the shopping stakes. I don't really think my loved ones know me well at all! Otherwise they would have bought me presents I wouldn't have to exchange. Thank The Good Lord Above they kept their receipts. Actually, my mother has taken to wrapping presents in a collage of Christmas receipts. Not only is it saving on paper - and therefore good for the environment - but it saves on the rancid gift economy bullshit of Christmas. Because really, the receipt often looks a whole lot better than the crap purchased at its expense. Once the disappointment of Christmas subsided and the trainwreck of family departed after a long day of eating overcooked turkey, drinking VB shandies and watching repeats of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, I ended the day soaking in a long hot beauty bath - it's the perfect place to ponder what the Boxing Day sales might bring.

I got up early on Boxing Day. My shopping circuit was thoroughly mapped out over a breakfast medley of leftover roasted meats. The Artswipe's Boxing Day Shopping Cartography: Myer, DJs, JB HiFi and Target with a couple of Gloria Jeans chasers thrown in for good measure. Maybe the gift-shop at the MCA would be a good place to get a new sex toy? Surely they have merchandised a whole range for the Julie Rrap show.

Start at Myer first because the teaming crowd of Dawn of the Dead extras lining up outside hours before opening is perfect material for examining the human condition. The ethnography of shopping is one of the first things on my mind before participating in consumer whoreticulture. Moreover, the crowds clamouring for their Myer mystore TM fix are always peopled with such hot snatch that you can score at least a year's supply of shower nozzle masturbation material.

The salivating throng of crowds lusting for homewares and haberdashery makes Boxing Day my favourite day of the year. But if you're going to make post-Christmas a sexy time, you need good underwear. You know, mix it up a bit at Bras and Things before checking out the stench of cheap cotton maxing out Men's underwear at Target. Maybe even take a chance on a few items left over in the change room, like a tasty little seamless microfibre low rise number or some comfortable odor controlling fabrics from Calvin Klein. Why bother trying them on beforehand as nothing makes for better souvenirs of festive cheer.

The Artswipe
Specials, 2007
Found objects

Sex: A New Artist Run Initiative

Spacedating

Giving artists something (or someone) to do during gallery-sitting shifts

In Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980), Kate (Angie Dickinson) goes to a museum, sits down and looks at a painting of a woman who returns her gaze. The viewer and the viewed caught cruising one another. Kate alternates between looking at this painting and another of a large baboon, who also stares at her. Such are the spectatorial gaze relations of paintings and people who look at them. At times Kate is distracted by people who move throughout the gallery. At other times she takes down some notes - some kind of shopping list and nothing to do with her experience of the paintings. A man with sexy sunglasses sits down and they begin an elaborate game of alternating between looking at each other and the art. Eventually they fuck. Soon after she is killed.

This has to be one of my all time favourite art scenes from a film because it illustrates the complex power relations enacted in places where spectatorship is encouraged, indeed expected. Galleries and museums are places where we look, and what better joy do we get from pretending to be absorbed in the art, when we're really checking out someone's arse. Something about art must make people horny.

You can imagine my excitement upon encountering Spacedating, a new concept in gallery sitting at artist run spaces in Sydney. I encountered Spacedating quite randomly on YouTube and to find out more watch the video posted below (which is cleverly constructed using the scenes I described from Dressed to Kill). After searching for more info about Spacedating online, I discovered that young artist Grzegorz Gawronski seems to be behind it all. Basically we all know minding galleries can be tedious and boring. But that can be remedied by joining a Spacedating database comprised of students from Sydney art schools. Next time you mind a gallery, ensure you participate in 'spacedating' a peer listed at the database. Nothing beats an afternoon fuck in a white cube. Except maybe a good old fashioned blow job in a (pre-digital) photo dark room.

Much like porn can be defined by the paradigm shift of the condom (i.e. rubber or pre-rubber) art sex is defined by whether we do it in digital or pre-digital spaces. Based on data or databased. You decide.