smart crotch

1. I get off on porn smartly and mindfully. I am interested in my desire. I do not presume it is natural, static, or predictable. I observe its form and shape, not because I want to know how my childhood experiences or social conditioning might have determined it beyond my control, but because I want to know its relationship to my happiness, my suffering, my creativity, and my politics.

2. I do not take my “self” as a viewer too seriously. I do not feel I need to conform to any expectation-on the part of the marketers, my communities,or myself-about what “people like me,” or with my body parts, should desire. I can, with some effort, practice erotic egolessness and/or performativity by exploring the delicious potential of cross-identifications and non-identifications. In sum, I practice the art of spectatorship, identifying and disidentifying with the images made available to me.

3. I am responsible for the impact of my sexual desires and sexual consumerism on others and myself. I will be mindful of where and to whom I direct my gaze, with particular attention to matters of consent and dehumanization.

4. I cultivate a private, internal space where I can honor and observe the complexity of my sexuality as it evolves. Though I remain publicly accountable, I provide myself with moments of exploratory freedom, creative license, and orgasmic surprises. I let my sexuality take me off guard. I move into it, even when it scares me. I trust myself to work productively -queerly and feministly- with my desire.

Hyperallergic by Hrag Vartanian May, 2012

Painter, author and critic Mira Schor’s current show at Marvelli Gallery delves into the world of language. The works on linen and paper chart a world where the individual appears in a form of stasis, holding a book or laptop, looking at things — windows, paintings, screens — and generating rectangles (and the occasional oval) which seem to speak, label, think and even dream.

All the works are rather small — the drawings are often larger than the paintings — and they appear to meditate on the state of the artist and intellectual, both labels that fittingly describe Schor.

The show is titled Voice and Speech, but there’s an erie silence to these works. The artist’s hand is alway present and the paint is often treated like ink, flowing with a dark contrast across washes of paint, defining space and and giving each rectangle it’s own character.