Author Archives: dogpossum

Being a woman in a gallery enjoying art


I remember once reading a blog post or art review where a reviewer tells the story of two young women (teenagers?) experiencing a gallery. They were basically running and laughing and trying to do the poses of the statues, and just generally having a very good time. The reviewer made a very good point about how this way of enjoying art was given lots of frowns in the gallery, but that they thought it was a really interesting, active way of enjoying art.

This image really stayed with me, and now when I go to galleries I try to remember that: I can experience art in lots of ways as well as just as standing and watching. The whole ‘stand and watch’ model is a bit elitist and assumes you have time and $$ to do art like this. When I’m in a gallery I give myself permission to skip things or to just wander about randomly, stopping if something catches my eye. And the ‘recreating poses’ thing is always really fun. It helps you understand poses and point of view and perspective and all that. And I LOVE making selfies with pictures. I found instagram gave me a good way of engaging with art and then sharing it with my friends. Next challenge: not taking too many pics :D

btw this is my favourite statue. I saw her in… the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam? I can’t remember who it is, but she was a queen*. I adore her. Taking a photo helped me remember her, and how I felt when I saw her, a strong mature woman in a sea of male artists and nymphs.

*She is Caroline, Queen of England (Bust of Caroline, Queen of England, John Michael Rysbrack, 1738). Looking at the photo on the website doesn’t feel the way it did looking at in person, on a plinth in the middle of the room. She was at my eye height, more or less, and she had presence, even in terracotta.

the Yarts

The Average Person Spends 27 Seconds Looking at a Work of Art. Now, 166 Museums Are Joining Forces to Ask You to Slow Down
Museums in Australia, Canada, the UK, the US, and elsewhere are holding special events for Slow Art Day on April 6.
….
Founded in 2009 by Phil Terry, the CEO of the consulting firm Creative Good, Slow Art Day asks museum-goers to spend ten minutes looking at a single work of art, focusing intently on the piece before them. The initiative is “counter-cultural to the smartphone and its growing dominance in culture, but also to blockbuster exhibits and the focus on absolute numbers,” (Slow Art Day)

I like to enjoy art in lots of different ways, depending on how I feel or where I am. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast. This idea that we have to look at art in one way (slow) is poop. Because it excludes those of us with little time, or kiddies on hand, or with special needs, etc etc etc. And some pieces of art want us to look quickly, to let our eye move. Even Warhol would probably have liked it most if we barely glanced at his soup cans as we walked past.

I do a lot of gallery and museum looking when I travel, and I’m super picky. I never ever need to see another Brett Whitely, and I’m a bit tired of Warhol (which he’d probably like). Good curating makes a collection lookable. I like a well-curated exhibit, but I can also take more time in a truly terrible exhibit bitching about the shocking layout, impenetrable text, or confusing space (eg I reckon that street photography exhibit at the Sydney Museum is woeful, when the subject matter is fascinating).

I’m a big fan of exhibitions that have pieces ‘in conversation’ with other pieces, or that involve the gallery itself in the exhibit. Rather than a featureless white wall that fades into the background, I like a gallery that speaks to us, that asks us to think about where we are, as well as what we are looking at.

The Secession building in Vienna is one of those places that asks us to think about the place of art in space (a building), a city (Vienna, wealthy European city, home to zillions of galleries and museums), a culture. The building is beyond beautiful, and home to the gorgeous Klimt Beethoven frieze. The Secession movement, though, was about freedom. To quote our friend wikipedia,

Secession artists were concerned, above all else, with the possibilities of art outside the confines of academic tradition.

They physically got themselves and their art up and out of the Vienna Künstlerhaus. But just walking past this incredible building – far smaller than the many of the galleries and museums all through the city – is exciting and inspiring.

I saw a great exhibit of contemporary radical British art (lots of black British art, feminist British art, etc) in Arario at Space in Seoul which was really cool because it was mostly 80s art* in a 1970s office building which was itself a comment on community and space. It was truly mesmerising and engaging. The building’s architect, Kim Swoo-geun, was making clear comments on the role of community, shared work, national identity v local identity, and shared space. The art, of course, was commenting on 70s and 80s Britain, and locating cultural space and identity as black and women artists in a colonial empire. Also there was swearing and many fucks thrown in Thatcher’s direction.


Similarly, I loved the Hundertvasser Haus in Vienna for the relationship between art and space.




For me, it’s not so much about individual pieces, but about the relationship between the pieces in a room, or a space. And that means having places to sit, to take selfies with pieces, to try a statue’s pose, to walk back and forth comparing pieces, to stop and peer at a bunch of tiny things in a case, etc etc etc.
I like a well thought out bit of text with useful information, and I’m a massive fan of exhibits combining different media (eg costume with paintings with prints with drawings…)





I saw a fabulous one of the Matisse cut outs at the Stedelijk which was in an interesting building, and used the concept of the cut outs in a fantastic way: we saw the pieces, we saw huge rooms dominated by huge colourful pieces, we saw tapestries inspired by them, we got to cut out our own and stick them up on the wall, we see films about the process, etc etc etc. It was just magical.

Years ago I saw an exhibit of a Lartigue’s journals (photos, notes, drawings, etc) in a British gallery (I think it was the Lartigue: album of a century exhibit at the Hayward in 2004)? It was just one room, but I spent HOURS there, pouring over the pages and photos. It wasn’t even hugely interesting in layout: they just had the journals open at pages and bigger prints of the images. But it was the subject material that made it so cool. It was so memorable that when I saw a tiny exhibit of his photos in Seoul years later, I was overcome by the feels.

Sometimes, though, I do like to stop and stare at one piece for ages.

I’ve been caught and stopped dead by some of the massive big pieces in the entrance way of the AGNSW lately. There was a fantastic, mindblowing series of huge canvases of Indigenous Art there last year that just stopped me in my tracks. They were so incredible, just on their own, that I had to stop and stare. For them, it was the sheer size and colour in a space that is functional – you walk through it to get to everything. They didn’t need anything more than to just be there, huge and bright and complex and wonderful, in a white, utilitarian space.

I occasionally stop in to see my favourite lady at breakfast picture at the AGNSW. Sometimes we do just want to sit and look at one piece for ages.

*This is ‘The New Black’ by Tracy Emin, 2002. Appliqué blanket. Emin’s most famous work is ‘Everyone ‘ which appeared in Saatchi’s exhibition of Young British Artists‘ work, ‘Sensation’ in 1997. YBA were ‘shocking’ young artists, and the exhibit included Emin’s work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995.

Safety and dance: the limits of the law

The laws that the state and nation have in place to dictate how we touch each other may not be good laws.
eg in NSW, Australia, the legal system does not adequately protect us from sexual assault and harassment. The laws are inadequate, the legal system (from police to courts) do not prevent or protect us, and the consequences of laws do not punish or educate offenders.

So I don’t think the laws are enough. I believe that our laws disadvantage marginalised peeps: women, children, girls, trans folk, queers, poc… anyone who’s not a straight white middle aged man with money.
Just saying ‘follow the laws’ is obviously not enough.

Who is responsible for enforcing safe spaces?

With regards to ‘types of physical spaces’ and who is responsible for them… Let’s ask ourselves: who has the power here?

I feel, personally, that if I know a person has assaulted or harassed someone, that I don’t want them at my event, and I don’t want to be at an event they’re at.
Because they are unsafe.
Because they are putting my friends at risk.
Because I am at risk.
So even if they’ve committed an offence in a space I’m not ‘responsible’ for, then I will still take action.

Further, we are all responsible for each other. When we start saying “Oh, this isn’t my event, I’m just here as a guest, I don’t want to do anything about that man I can see groping each of his partners,” we are abrogating our responsibilities to each other as humans, as friends, as a community. We are also perpetuating a patriarchal system where the most powerful people at the top of that hierarchical pyramid of power do all the acting, and the people at the bottom are acted upon. Where the white straight middle aged men at the top do all the decision making and acting, and all the women, people of colour, queers, young people, old people, poor people are acted upon.

I’m actually at the point in my work on this issue in dance where I think that we need to move away from top-down solutions, and on to a flatter, peer-centred solution.

In this setting, yes ALL men are responsible for preventing sexual harassment and assault. Which means that they not only police their own behaviour, they also keep an eye on their male mates, and step in to say “Hey, that’s not cool” when they see them do dodgy stuff. Whether they’re a teacher, DJ, organiser, keen social dancer or bar fly. All men have a responsibility for each other, and for the rest of us.

Similarly (and more powerfully), people who are positioned as ‘powerless’ or without responsibility in dance spaces (eg young women, social dancers, beginner students, teenagers, etc etc ) should be encouraged to find ways they can take care of their friends.
Together, we are mighty.

I’d like to get more active on a ‘peer program’ like the ACON Rovers (https://pivotpoint.org.au/why-i-love-the-acon-rovers/).

Or to simply teach students in class to:

  1. Trust their instincts. If it feels wrong, then it is wrong. If it feels bad, then it is bad.
  2. Practice saying NO and STOP. ‘No thank you’ to dance invites, ‘Stop’ mid-dance, and to step in and tell someone “STOP” if they see them making someone else uncomfortable.
  3. Experiment with how they touch and are touched in class to develop a spectrum of touch, and to get to know what ‘good touch’ feels like and ‘not good’ touch feels like. And to understand that these aren’t fixed states, and can vary with each partner. eg I love to hold my good friends very close, but I can’t bear to have someone unpleasant touch my hand.

Once they have these tools, these students will then go out and interact with other people, teaching them through example about how to touch, and how to be ok with people saying no to dance invites, or asking them to change how they touch people.

More than a Code of Conduct

I have some feels about this topic, largely based on my experiences writing and thinking about sexual assault and harassment, and on my experiences as an event and school manager, dance teacher, and DJ. But mostly as a consumer and attendee: someone who’s tried to get help at events.

With specific regards to a code of conduct:
A CoC is just one part of a range of strategies for responding to and preventing sexual assault and harassment (and other dangerous and/or illegal anti-social behaviours). It’s important to think about the _purpose_ of a CoC. This is one for my current event, Jazz BANG 2-5 May 2019. I’ve just seen an error in there where I’ve clearly fucked up the html, so I’ll fix that. Lesson there: the first draft of a CoC is never the best. This is about the.. tenth? draft of mine. And It’s definitely not perfect.

What should a CoC say? I think of it as:

  1. a statement of the organisation/host’s values;
  2. a public list of ‘rules’ or a statement about how this event abides by laws regarding anti-social/dangerous behaviour.

Who is the intended audience for a CoC?

  1. The staff and organisers of the event/space are the first audience: this document should remind them of the things they value and hold dear. It should be a positive rallying call: “We believe people have a right to safety. We believe that lindy hop today should honour its black roots. etc etc”
  2. A CoC addresses contractors and casual staff: visiting teachers, one-off volunteers, musicians in visiting bands, etc. It tells them what this space values, and the general attitudes about safety and mutual respect. This suggests to marginalised peeps that they can be safe here, and ask for help, but it also says to potential (or existing) offenders that their behaviour will not be tolerated (so hopefully it works as a deterrent).
  3. A CoC addresses punters/customers, students, guests and attendees. People who pay to be there. It is a public statement of values, an invitation, and a welcome for people. It’s also a warning to offenders: don’t do that here, because we will act on it.

More broadly, a CoC can also work as a smoke screen, or token gesture. eg I know offenders who’ve publicly declared that they have and support a CoC, with the intent that this action would then absolve them of future offences: ‘I can’t be an offender, I have a CoC and I support safe spaces’.

Structurally, a CoC is useful if it has:

  • a statement of intent or value statement (what we value, who we are, what we believe in)
  • a code of conduct (what we will not tolerate)
  • a specific sexual harassment policy that outlines what the local laws define as sexual assault and harassment, and then how this manifests in a dance context
    -> a reminder that businesses (eg in NSW, Australia) have a legal obligation to work to protect employees and customers from sexual harassment and assault
  • the very first thing a CoC needs is a helpline: how to get help in a hurry (phone number, email, person for f2f)
  • then a description of the process (what happens) after reporting
  • and a description of the consequences for offenders.

—Articulate the ‘unspoken rules’—
I think it’s essential to have a CoC and to never rely on ‘common sense’, because the lindy hop world is characterised by travel and travellers: we are from different cultures and countries, we speak different languages, and our countries/regions have different laws. So there is no _common_ sense, just a lot of different types of sense that regularly contradict each other.

I’ve found this idea of ‘unspoken rules’ needs to be interrogated when we’re doing this work. eg I’ve found that women reporting offenders may say “He made me feel gross.” Which is a legitimate comment. But then, if we want to tell men not to ‘be gross’, we need to know exactly what it is that ‘felt gross’. So it’s important to encourage women (and men and everyone else) to articulate what it was that ‘felt gross’. For example, ‘feel gross’ might include:

  • standing a bit too close than is comfortable
  • maintaining eye contact too long, or ‘following her with his eyes’ wherever she was in the room
  • touching her frequently and in many ways from the very first meeting
  • asking her to dance repeatedly
  • buying her drinks

In isolation, there’s nothing wrong with these actions. But it’s the combination of actions, and the duration or number of these actions that makes someone ‘feel gross’. Looking at this pattern, I’d say that this man is dominating a woman’s time and physical and social space. If he’s continually speaking to her, asking her questions, etc etc, he’s also isolating her from other people: he’s dominating her time and space. If this is happening to a brand new very young woman dancer by an older man, then we would hear alarm bells.

But all these ‘feel gross’ in more ways in some cultures than in others. And we often know the difference between someone who is accidentally inappropriate and someone who is deliberately inappropriate or carelessly inappropriate.

So if our CoC is meant to be useful, we need to have specific examples of what’s not ok. eg, a ‘How does this relate to dancing’ section.
After you’ve put a lot of research and work into this, you need to think about how you deliver this information. I feel a multimodal approach is best:

  • a digital version on the website
  • a paper version on a page at a dance
  • an abbreviated, visual or comic version online, on a poster at events, on flyers/postcards or other take-home paper media
  • short spoken comments and intros in classes and at parties.

From here, though, you realise quite quickly that a CoC means nothing if you don’t also have a range of other tools in place. You need a) response strategies, b) prevention strategies, c) training and support for staff, d) legal advice for drafting documents and enforcing rules.

Responding to incidents:

  • what is your response strategy if someone does make a response? Are you staff trained in this? Are their responses consistent?
  • do you have a report making process to record the incident?
  • if you do eject someone from an event, how long are they ‘banned’? How do you tell staff that someone is banned? What do they do if the banned person turns up at events – when do they call the police?
  • what is the actual step-by-step process of ejecting someone from an event? Who does it? When? How?
  • if you ‘warn’ someone, what are the consequences if they repeat offend?

And so on and so on.
I’m personally very not ok with approaches that focus exclusively on responding to incidents, and that use a top-down hierarchy to enforce consequences. If we just have a boss ‘telling people off’ and banning people to ‘protect women’, then we are just maintaining the patriarchal status quo. We’re not actually changing culture.
I believe that we need to dismantle this. So we need to talk about _prevention_. And that’s where things get complicated.
Threats of consequences for offenders do not work as dissuasion. If it did, then the existing laws would be adequate.

How do we change the current lindy hop culture?
We need to look at class culture and the way teachers speak to each other, students interact, etc etc.
….and lots of other stuff.

What next after Codes of Conduct?

A few years ago, in 2015, I did a survey of Australian dance events, to see if they included a code of conduct on their event websites. There were mixed results, including a fairly unpleasant email from the organiser of an event which did not have a CoC at the time, and has since folded.

I (or someone else!) should at some point revisit this survey, to see if things have changed much in Australia. Do we see CoC at all Australian events? If not, which events don’t have them, and why not?

But that’s not the topic of this post.

Now I’m wondering if events (including local party nights) have follow-up processes to accompany their CoC. It’s all very well to have a list of things attendees cannot do at the event, but I have some questions.

  • Does the CoC provide specific examples of what constitutes sexual harassment or assault in a dance setting?
  • What are the consequences for people who break the rules?
  • Who enforces the rules?
  • Is there a spectrum of responses from warning, through banning, to calling the police or evacuating a building?
  • If these responses exist, are they listed in the CoC?
  • What is the in-house process for these responses?
  • Who has the authority to call for a consequence and then enforce them?
  • How are these actions documented?
  • How are these documents stored?
  • Who has access to them?
  • Is there any follow-up on these actions?
  • Is there any scope for the repatriation of banned offenders?
  • What are the terms for their return to the event?
  • Who monitors this process?
  • How is information about who is banned passed between generations of staff at an event?
  • How does this communication of knowledge account for Australian defamation laws, which would deem this publication of a potentially defamatory statement?
  • If a banned person does decide to sue for defamation, who would they sue – the organisation/business? An individual working at the event? If the latter, how does the host organisation respond to and support this person?
  • How does the host organisation ensure that staff are not exploiting their power to break the CoC rules? What measures are in place to police the policers?

I feel at this point the majority of events have gone no further than simply cutting and pasting a CoC. These later questions all ask for a fair bit of work. And I know there are some organisers which do not prioritise safety to the extent that they would invest in this sort of labour.

Who is responsible for fighting racism in dance?

White people, particularly white people of influence (like dance teachers) need to get their learn on. Rather than placing the burden of policing racism on the backs of people of colour, white people need to listen to people of colour, and start policing their own behaviours.
Just as men need to be responsible for policing their own sexist behaviour, rather than waiting for women to do all the labour of speaking up.

We can be certain that the preponderance of white faces in lindy hop today is a result of the white mainstream’s appropriation of black culture. Being able to steal-and-sell a cultural practice is a mark of power and privilege. The repackaging and ‘toning down’ of the black racial markers of lindy hop (and other dances) is part of this process of appropriation. Insisting on using counts, focussing on biomechanics rather than music, enforcing white middle class gender roles, and so on are all markers of white appropriation of black dances. These dances are made palatable (and marketable) for white middle class audiences through this ‘whitening’ of black dance.

If we _don’t_ address this matter in our classes, and in our own thinking, we are perpetuating it. We are doing racist stuff. We are shoring up racism.

Breai Mason-Campbell has asked people “What are you doing to decolonise lindy hop?” Because that’s how we address racism in this dance. We, white people, do something about it.

Thank you for explaining that his disrespect was her own fault

To think I actually went back through my own comments to see if I was being aggressive.

Tip: I wasn’t. Whenever a woman expresses an opinion with any degree of confidence, it’s perceived by this type of man as aggressive.

My dood, you have not begun to experience me being aggressive.