Exploration #4: Politicizing the Personal Postcard

Exploration #4: Contemporary Art Concepts

Regender: (from wiktionary.org)

1.     To cause (a person) to be seen to have a (new, different) gender identity or role.

2.     To cause (a thing or subject) to be gendered in a new or different way; to be associated with a new gender or with new genders.

Regender: A different kind of translator reinterprets websites by transposing gender specific language (“male” with “female” “she” with “he”) giving viewers an opportunity to explore instances (glaring and subtle) in which men and women are subjected to cultural beliefs about gender. Looking at a website in this way exposes the disparity between the presentation of male and female and reveals a culture’s conscious and subconscious treatment of the two sexes. Understanding this site in terms of contemporary art requires that we think of this sight as net art.

What is net art? According to NetSpecific.net “net art is an elusive and sometimes anarchic art form which uses the Internet as its primary material. Net art works often draw on data from other Internet materials and websites, which helps give them their distinctive dynamics and transience.”

K. P Yee’s software allows the user to appropriate and recontextualize a website to reveal codes of gender and challenge stereotypes through role reversal. Let me interject, while this is an extremely useful tool for unearthing cultural beliefs, where does transgender fit into this? Although our language is not set up (at the present time) to address the placement of transgender (or gender neutral) groups, the exclusion of this group reveals its own set of beliefs.

What is created is “appropriation” because Regender uses content from the entire site to create new “art” - a  “commentary” on gender. The software only changes words that are coded as gender specific (female names are changed to male, her is changed to him, men is changed to women); therefore, creating an entirely new work that seems “out of context” with the original. At first glance, recontextualization seems subtle but present.  The original site is the familiar “image.” The contrasting gender language  - “the text with which [the site] is not usually associated” (Gude 2004,  9) - male instead of female, forces the viewer to read and interpret the content of the site differently from its original intent.

As women’s reproductive rights are a hot topic at the moment, I was curious to see just how and what Regender exposed about these conversations. In my search, I looked at two websites: www.nwlc.org (National Women’s Law Center) and  www.forwomen.org. 

The National Women's Law Center advocates for the rights of women on many levels. Some of the issues they address are Childcare & Early Learning, Education & Title IX, Employment, Health Care & Reproductive Rights, Judges & Court, Poverty & Income Support, Social Security & Retirement, Tax & Budget, and A Women's Agenda.

A regendering of these issues looks something like this... 

Regendered articles found throughout the site include: 

Men at risk of losing affordable health insurance

Can the Supreme Court Take a Paternity Coverage?

2014 State Level Abortion Restrictions:

An Extreme Overreach into Men’s Reproductive Health Care

The Hyde Amendment Creates an Unacceptable Barrier To Men Getting Abortions: We Must Use the Resources To Get Men the Health Care They Need

A Men’s Economic Agenda Must Help Men and Families Succeed

"A Men's Economic Agenda Must Help Men and Families Succeed" was especially revealing of the disparity of power and privilege between men and women (you can click on the title above to link to the article).  However, regender.com does have its limits as the "Threats to Reproductive Health" page was not accessible through the appropriated site. 

Thinking about women's reproductive rights brought Marc Quinn's Venus: Alison Lapper Pregnant to mind. Lapper, born with no arms and short legs, is depicted nude and pregnant. The sculpture challenges viewers to address Lapper’s “(dis)ableness AND her pregnancy. Such an image exposes attitudes about physical normality and beauty, a (dis)abled person’s ability and choice to reproduce, and the female nude as subject all within a very public place (the sculpture was on view in London's Trafalgar Square from 2005 to 2007). Lapper's body causes discomfort and unease for some while the armless Venus de Milo is considered a beautiful masterpiece in the Eurocentric art world. That is as baffling as sixty (plus) year old men making healthcare decisions concerning women's reproductive rights.  The use of power and privilege to control women's rights of reproduction is not a new practice.  In fact, had Lapper had the misfortune of living in Texas in 1849, Dr. Gordan Lincecum could have and probably would have proposed forced sterilization stating that her genes were "undesirable" for reproduction.

Resources:

Gude, O. (2004). Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education. Art Education, 57(1), 6-14.

www.wiktionary.org

www.nwlc.org

www.regender.com

www.forwomen.org