IKEA products make you gay

Tony Grew wrote an interesting article about IKEA's new catalogue in Poland and some local reactions. You never know when the catalogue is printed in your country and how people will react on it. But Poland is ridiculous at this point. I am boycotting any Polish products because of their boycott and I think I will buy some IKEA items next week even if i don't need any but just to piss off the Catholic church:

Catholics in Poland are boycotting IKEA because its catalogue features pictures of same-sex couples. National newspapers and news websites have covered the story and the concerns of some religious people that the Swedish company is "trampling" on Christian concepts of family.
"I would not like to cease doing shopping in IKEA but if the firm does not stop promoting homosexual relationships, I will, unfortunately, feel compelled to do so and I will notify about it all the people I know so that they do the same," one Catholic woman wrote.
IKEA has defended its advertising and has refused to respond to the boycott.

"Homosexuality is one of the essential elements of living in contemporary society," said IKEA spokesperson Karolina Horoszczak.

The boycott is being led by Fronda.pl website: "Treating single-sex relationships on a par with married couples is impermissible," said Grzegorz Górny, the editor-in-chief of Fronda.

"IKEA's publication is a promotion of a particular style of living, which does not deserve public propagation. This is connected with the strategy of accustoming people to homosexual relationships and then of legalising such relationships. This is done to establish their picture in society as equal and then to legalise them."

This is nothing new, IKEA had this sort of problems in US already: In 2007 the American Family Association (AFA) accused the Swedish furniture retailer of trying to force a liberal, "homosexuality-affirming" world view on US consumers through advertising. The association, who claim to promote "traditional family values," said IKEA routinely promote gay lifestyles.
The ad showed a gay male couple playing on the floor with their young daughter. As they lean back against their IKEA sofa, a voiceover says: "Why shouldn't sofas come in flavours, like families?"

Some Polish politicians are among the most homophobic in Europe.
A gay parent who is in a sexual relationship should have their children taken from them, according to a member of the governing Civil Platform party.
Stefan Niesiolowski, who is a deputy Speaker of the Polish parliament, told a TV audience in June that same-sex families are abnormal and described lesbian couples with children as a "serious pathology."
Former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother, Lech Kaczynski, the current President, caused controversy within the LGBT community for their anti-gay stance.
The pair banned several gay pride marches in the country and on a state visit to Ireland at the beginning of this year Lech Kaczynski said that the promotion of homosexuality would lead to the eventual destruction of the human race.
Poland was widely mocked last year when it was revealed that Ewa Sowinska, a government-appointed children rights watchdog, said she would ask psychologists to advise if the Teletubbies' camp antics could affect children.
"I noticed [Tinky Winky] has a lady's purse, but I didn't realise he's a boy," she said. "At first I thought the purse would be a burden for this Teletubby. . . Later I learned that this may have a homosexual undertone."

Banksy's Pet Store and Charcoal Grill in New York

Banksy: "New Yorkers dont care about art, they care about pets. So Im exhibiting them instead. I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing. I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If its art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art."

Two Romanian performances in Budapest

I went last week to two shows from a shabby theatre from Bucharest that i would never think of attending in a local situation. But my subject re-position, on the margins of Romanian culture, made me curious about what these awful Romanians with their horrible theatre culture have to say. Last week i had a great feeling: to be detached from a culture that is stuck in pre-1968 epistemology that is, first of all, vomited on stage.

But about the two shows and their complete opposition:

One was made without a director, specially fit for 2 old actors unable to move and get out of their emplois. The rest of the actors on stage were simply there, no acting involved, always ready to give a line or to create a situation for their two decrepit stars in order to produce the big joke that everyone in the audience was crazy about. Disgusting shite. The worst part besides the first-year acting school cliches was their usage of a famous Russian play that brings public for sure. One of my all time favourite plays with so many insights and dark complicated parts was transformed into a cheap slapstick comedy with no characters whatsoever, just 2 dead actors on stage, and dead in a Peter Brook way.

The situation changed for the next show: a Hungarian play staged by a Hungarian hysteric male director with a strong creative standpoint. Same company, that he was telling me about after the play: "Isn't it amazing that i manage to do it here?" The performance was a mise-en-scene in the most sincere way: in a Butlerian way, Bocsardi shows the fake of heterosexual matrix, nothing more than an act played by some actors who don't know what they act but they have to play for an audience with patriarchal expectations. Impossibility of representation, relation spectator-performer, end of narration, dilating the performing body, the character as abjection and many more ideas are explored in this small show. One of the best directors that I've seen for last years.
I wanted to read some reviews after the show and it was oh so predictable: Romanian critics crushed the show in their specific style, their Christian rightist instincts never lie. And they are true in pushing this show on the margins: it is definitely dangerous for their theatrical milieu. the most apprecieted part was the moment when the Actress has a long monologue on showing her love and affection for the Actor, the place where the matrix is shown just in order to be deconstructed and proven empty later. The critics got only this moment of expressing "noble feelings" in an old acting school way and that's everything they enjoyed in the show. That was for me the moment where I felt the tension in a special way: they started well they can't ended in this patriarchal manner. I was hoping that the show will go on. And it did. Just in order to show that it is just acting, that they can fool you, that there is nothing behind, the stage is empty, no essentialist oppressions are hidden there and are just shown, acted out, put on display, not lived. And the last scene worked perfect in this sense: the dead characters were all the time on stage in their coffins, they are killed once more by the actor, in a gesture that proves their emptiness, a lack of flesh, a lack of corporeality, just full body masks.

Damn right: Death to the characters!

Art is not for kids. Only in Australia so far

Raphael - Galatea

If you were not shocked by the kiddy porn depicted by the image above I am sure you can be shocked by what is going on in Australia right now.
Alison Croggon, a writer from Australia covers the case of the photographer Bill Henson. He provoked a huge controversy when he had an exhibition with some nude images of a 13-year-old girl. His work were confiscated by the Australian police and the debates were similar to the famous Romanian pink pony case. Even if, as in the Romanian case, New South Wales Department of Public Prosecutions recommended that no charges should be made and the Office of Film and Literature Classification declared the images "mild and justified" and gave them a PG rating some fucked effects are coming out now.

So, the Australian story continues: the Labor Party proposes some new laws in reaction to the case, with a generous purpose of protecting the kids from being indecently represented in the arts. It is not only about photographs but about the depiction of those under 18 in any medium – painting, performance, literature and so on. I hope Eastern European politicians won't get inspired and forbid all plastic toys, crosses, violent scenes and other evil ingredients in art. But seriously, the image of the child is used once more for other political purposes than protecting someone: control, surveillance and total censorship.

Jeanne is back

Jeanne is in Germany now and she has a blog. Check it out here. I always liked her style of writing and now she is here with some fresh and captivating stuff. I hope she won't get bored too quick...

There is also a post about Jehanne Complex, a post that is full of memories for me. It was really amazing to work on this performance, to construct it step by step, to talk a lot, rehearse and drink coffees together for hours and hours. And I really miss that type of chemistry. The post goes like this:

"Retrospective Thoughts on Jehanne Complex
2 November 2008
The repeated rehearsing of something does not lead to lack of catharsis with each performance. This I learned clearly. The throwing of everything up and down again. Giving. Self-obsession or self–entrenchment again and again. But, it is also investment FOR people, as well as a self-congratulations. (Initial inspiration and motives, in the end, are perhaps not so important.)
First scene: “My name is Jeanne, and I’ve just eaten a hamburger.” Black men’s suit, tie, shoes and skull cap with white button-down shirt. I carry a Burger King meal bag containing a whopper, French fries, a coke and a Heinz ketchup bottle. I walk around the stage, staring at the audience suspiciously, after closing the white curtains making up the stage’s backdrop. Meditative, Middle-Eastern-sounding music comes on and I remove my shoes and meditate. After I can relax and control my breathing, I emerge from my meditation and begin to unpack the meal bag. I spread a lot of ketchup over the whopper, set out the French fries and coke, and begin to eat. I always ate three big bites of the burger (it affected my digestion).
Second scene: Microphone “Close to the town where I was born, there is a tree known as the ladies’ tree. It’s a great beech tree, centuries old. In the shade of its branches, there is a spring. In the month of Mary, children decorate the branches of the ladies’ tree with garlands. They sit beside the spring and eat together. I did that with my friends, but I never saw or heard tell of dwarfs or any other creatures of the devil… God’s voices haunt me. They never do leave me in peace. They are constantly encouragin’ and pushin’ me.” The microphone has ghosts that trick me. I speak into one and the other one produces sound. My voice is manipulated and distorted…a sort of comedy.
Third scene: Shaving The legs, like a girl, then the face, like a boy. Jehanne was sexually ambiguous with no period bleeding and breasts, and a mission from “God”. I contemplatively shave one calf in silence…getting some shaving cream on my chin, I begin to rub it along my jaw. Gospel song of “Run on for a long, long time…” I felt like a hero preparing for battle. Like Jehanne before leading an army. But then, my tormentors arrive…"

Brecht – The Hardcore Machine at MU Theatre Budapest

A few words about Dunapart and the performing arts platform: a huge personal disappointment. An awful crowd, snobbish fancy dressed theatre goers and critics, talking some disgusting French, probably just for the beautiful intonations, claiming the last pantheon of being bourgeois: the experimental theatre.

I went to see one show that was so promising: Brecht the Hardcore Machine from Andras Urban Company, based on Brecht’s Buckow Elegies. It had its premiere last year in Berlin and it is supposed to represent a break with literary drama and post-dramatic theatre that is not performative enough for them and still too much based on texts. “This performance is not a play” they say. And I remember using the exactly same words two weeks ago about my Beckett trilogy. Not following a particular narrative, the performance approaches a young working girl that enters “the wonderful world of ideology and corporeality.”

And more they say: “Labour. Starvation. Sex. Power. Fun. Class struggle is not dead.” Not to mention the goody goody focus on the body of actors, very third theatre style. Very Barbaesque. Very exciting. The first feeling that something is fishy about this show was when I entered the small MU and I saw an awful exhibition a la bible belt post-feminism with pop art playmates spreading messages like “Dworkin and Queer are Dead”. Nothing to do with the show one might say. Not really I say. A show for me cannot exist outside the space of the performance, the artists’ usage of spectators with their breaths, their bodies, their nicely combed hair and their greedy eyes. And this public was just horrible. Together with the unfit space of MU for such a show.

Continuing with the show: beautiful ideas, generous attempts, ingenious solutions, hard working actors but a limited vision, a shitty director shitting his pants, not leaving the actors think with their bodies and dilate them just for the sake of some shitty fixed images, weak scenes and a personal gratification. And no hysterical creativity here. Trying to tell a retro-political revue they ended up with the most horrible clichés that made me feel embarrassed. But on the other hand, the commodification of Brecht is not new-fangled and it doesn’t have to be subtle all the time. Maybe the good news is that Brecht sells and is sold again and these guys proved it once again. Because as good ol’ Brecht said “What is theatre if not a night of good entertainment?”

Like Arpad Schilling after this bitter taste performance, I ended up dreaming of a theatre made in the forest where no one dares to come. Or like Tadeusz Kantor to secretly dream of all artists dropping dead.

again about organs

The femiblogosphere that i read exploded on this viral. The text says: “Becoming a donor is probably your only chance to get inside her.” More like a porn ad, it was made for the Belgian “Reborn To Be Alive” organ donor foundation. What looks like a necrophiliac joke of sexploitation phantasy produced some interesting reactions to the adolescent bloggers that couldn't get it. "Is she going to die or what? she looks pretty hot in this picture. i don't get it" they might say.

But they surprise the subversion by stupidity of this ad: the phantasy in front of their eyes is a phantasy of death, a deadly person who is not a perfect whole body, she is made of organs that are not so healthy after all. Her organs eat other organs in a mayhem-organ-orgy. And she depends on the generosity of some anonymous donors that gets only one image coming from The Realm of the Senses: the teenager pornconsumer dreaming about his jerking off organ being cut off and put inside her. The monstruous woman, aparently pop culturally appealing but hiding a vagina dentata, strikes again. Where are the good-old pin-up gals from the 50s?