of
Desire
Formula of Desire: Academic/Porn Star Panties, installation with Elizabeth M. Stephens, Bates Faculty Show, Bates College Museum, June-October, 2005.
Catalog text:
She’s my type; they’ve got chemistry; gf seeks sm; roses, candlelight, lingerie. Formulas of desire may seem mathematical (a butch 8=6 + a tool belt or a tranny 5) or liquid (ditto). Their ingredients may be transparent or opaque, material or intangible, glittery or dark, unalterably hardwired or feather-boa malleable. They may be some, none, or all of the above. They may be experienced as internal even as they are fanned, indeed sometimes produced, among luscious products—material products, products of interpretation, products of interaction.
Formulas of teaching, writing, and making are equally perverse. Myths of creation meet structures of recognition at the fraudulent solo. Group projects meet the gpa. Lonely cultural producers meet the lie of it. We lock ourselves up to write a book, make art —close our office doors, barter self-absorption for extravagant attention later on. But even in there we’re out there: working from, for, with readers, activists, artists.
Collaborations make visible, central, and better that non-solo core of process. They are formulas of practice that can be as hot, as difficult, as fabulous as any other sparked meetings. Bronze my panties and I’ll fill your pink boxes. Nothing could be more simple. Or less so.
Wall text:
formula of desire
Formula of Desire is a collaboration between Erica Rand and the Love Art Laboratory.
She's my type; they've got chemistry; gf seeks sm; roses, candlelight, lingerie. A butch 8 = 6 + a tool belt or a femme top = a tranny 5. Formulas of desire are mathematical and liquid. In there and out there. Hardwire and feather boa. Luscious products. Sexual economy. Bronze my panties and I'll fill your vitrines.
- photographs courtesy of Luc Demers -
More on Formula of Desire at the Love Art Laboratory