100 Years of Attitude - opening monologue
BIO: Going South
Gross National Product (extract)
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Going South
At the age of
five I escaped with a circus
I guess I must not have been talented in any of the circus skills
because at the age of seven, the circus abandoned me
on the road, halfway between Clavel and Samanita
with Sandy, the monkey
I remember that morning,
we looked at each other's eyes and we knew:
they were gone
we headed north
after 60 miles of quiet walking
we stopped in a little town called Milanta for water
I found a job there, feeding birds
in a bird store
Sandy kept walking north
without showing any attachement to me...
I guess I must not have been talented feeding birds
because after a month I lost my job at the bird store
I kept walking north
I reached Gandara
I had some money in my pockets,
I decided to invest in education
I went to school
a good one
the heirs of many important people were going to that school
I made good contacts there
I told them that my father was a diplomat, he had to travel a lot
I was invited to trendy birthdays parties
I met a rich guy
we got married
we had kids, and a house and servants
I became a doctor
my kids were very happy,
they were making important friends
because of my diploma
but I wasn't happy
I knew they didn't love me
I left, walking north again
looking for true love
I was wasting my time
I decided to start having sex
I was talented at that
I was helping people to relax
giving pleasure, getting pleasure
after five years I ran out of desire
"True love is God", I read on a car's bumper sticker
"Expect a miracle"
then I did
I expected a miracle
and then I found out that the miracle was faith
so I've got a miracle
I finally had faith
I also had two dogs
my life was getting crowded
I knew something was important:
the glass of water
I was getting old and thirsty
and nobody there to bring me a glass of water
then I got it myself
and I remembered my mother
the day I abandoned her
I was five, she was twenty five
I wondered -How old is she now?
that issue started to obsess me
I had to find her
I headed south looking for my mother
I found her in the audience
at the circus
my curiosity was satisfied:
she was old
about twenty years older than me
she didn't remember the day I left her
but she was forgiving and understanding
I gave her a glass of water
and I left
looking for true love
"True love is inside you", somebody told me
how could I get there?
my holes...
I had 10
holes
I developed a close relationship with my holes
I tried to take care of them
things were coming out of my holes
I could put things inside my holes
pull out things, off my holes
I could go inside me
I was humid inside
my fingers were coming out with different fluids
with different textures
different smells
from each hole
how far inside could I go?
were they connected?
nothing was possible without my holes
through my holes I was listening, reading, shiting, talking, fucking
without my holes
I wouldn't have any interaction with the outside world
I was my holes
then I thought
How can our relationship with our holes
affect our relationship with other people's holes?
and how can our relationship with our own
and other people's holes affect our vision of the world?
I asked Mother Nature about holes...
she gave me fingers.
digging in my holes
I found my soul
I found political tendencies
sexual preferences
cultural origins
I could dig in
I couldn't dig out
of me
people had opinions about me
I wasn't sure why
they were looking at me
I wanted to make them happy
I wanted them to laugh
people laughing around me
I was the clown
but I could look at them in the eyes
and I knew more about them than I knew about me
- Shut up fucking bitch!
they said
- So what?
they said
- man hater
they said
mind your own business
they said
- Who are you?
they said
-I am a spic for export
I said
that gave me an idea
spic for export sounds like a product
I was broke and I was a product
I was ready to sell my culture
I was ready to sell whatever they thought I was
If they created me
it's because they needed me
I was a liar again
taking care of people's desires again
my need
digging inside me
it wasn't my soul then
it was my stomach
I didn't want to comfort myself
I didn't want to get distracted
what was the point?
it wasn't true love anymore
I had to pay my rent
maybe it's time to commit suicide
I thought
maybe it's time to find god
I thought
maybe it's time to be homeless
something was missing in my life..
oh, yeah, power
the ones I thought were the losers
were making good money by now
my teeth were getting old
and I still had no clue what was life about
I thought I was a winner
at some point I thought I was the messiah too
I am a historic moment
I am lost in history
I am a flying goldfish
v v v
I DRESS THEREFORE I AM
I am a woman in a lesbian body
I am a man in a woman's body
I am a woman's body in men's clothes
I am a man born with earrings
I am a butch costume with long hair
I am a masculine voice of a feminine soul
I am a menstruating female body with masculine gestures
I have a non-shaved woman's skin
I have dyke's clothes
I transvestite when I put on a dress
I wear my name
I am the name
I get dressed, I perform
I can't perform my desire, I can
I can't dress my desire, I can
I have my desire, I am
I wear gestures
I wear expectations
I wear meanings
I don't wear breasts, I have
I don't wear a phallus I am
I say,
I have my sex, I am my gender
I am not naked
I've never been
Butch Hamlet –
I am a frigid bitch
My mother is a bald nymphomaniac
My grand mother is a hypochondriac whore
My great grandmother was an ugly dog
My great great grand mother was a dizzy dame
My sister is a flat chested witch
My aunt is a dowdy matron
My great aunt was a whiny bimbo
My mother-in- law was a cunt
My niece is a stinking vamp
My grand niece is an illiterate slut
My Mother Superior was a snobby, pretentious petit bourgeois
My step mother was a ball buster
My nurse is a hysterical wench
My butcher's wife is a tacky whale
My gypsy fortune teller is a dumb broad
My wet nurse was a fag-hag
My girlfriends are all low-class common fat-assed cows
My girl-scout leader was a sex-starved widow
My half sister is a vicious spinster
My manicurist is an old hag
My typist is a loony hussy
My Avon lady is a temptress
My god mother is a tramp
My seamstress is a bull-dyke
My landlady is an aggressive crone
My grandmother's maid is a home wrecker
My neighbor's washer woman is a bleeding-heart liberal
My midwife was an untalented chorus girl
My girlfriend is a whore
My queen is a conniving shrew
'Liars 17
Liars 17 is a muchlongerthannecessary outernet performance that will last 7 days.
During the seven days of the performance Susana will do pretty much nothing. Anticipating, in a purely a-priori judgement of human psyque that the performance could eventually turn boring and or irksome as a consequence of people's relationship to TV, sex and other sources of entertainment, she won't allow any audience to attend. She will lock herself in her bedroom looking at the wall. A camera will be videotaping her and projecting her image in the opposite wall. Since Susana doesn't own any camera and or projector, the image projected in the opposite wall will be just her shadow created with a lamp placed directly in front of her.
At this point we will pretend that Susana is a worker, she has to work for a living and do not have the opportunity to stay seven days locked in a room. This is what we call the post-endurance part of the performance. She will eventually go out to walk dogs --the job that presumably provides her current daily income-- and then she will go back to the room. Every dog walk will symbolize the service economy . Every twenty dollars bill she will collect from her dog walking will symbolize the workers income. The kinetic of the dog walking will represent the workers being pulled towards the poop or women pick up the shit. During the dog walks we hope to further analyze the relationship between contemporary prophylactic practices and punishment (Would people pick up the shit if they wouldn't get a ticket for not doing it? for example). The plastic bags used during the prophylactic practice will be compared then with the use of latex as a protective barrier during intercourse.
This is when the most political phase of the performance will unfold. Recent polls show that most people find the latex restricting some of the pleasure when used as a prophylactic measure during sexual practices. She will then ask if the plastic bag used during the other contemporary prophylactic practice is restricting some of the pleasure as well.
She might even get more experimental and ambitious with her project, trying for example, shadow puppets with her fingers on the wall.
During the seven days of the performance we don't know yet how many times she will go to the bathroom, but every time she will go it will symbolize bodily functions.
The performance could be broadcast live via the internet simultaneously in Argentina, Paraguay, Nicaragua Guatemala and San Salvador. Liars will be also broadcast indefinitely at www.susanacook.com.
Convenient note: Every time you visit Susana's website you get five cents discount in the Museum of Arts In General of Buenos Aires.
About the artist: Susana Cook is better known for breaking 50 computers she found in the garbage during her show Gross National Product, presented at The Kitchen in June 2000. Her work concentrates on National identity, sexual preferences, body postures, political identity, sexual politics and body parts.
Liars 17 is part of the Liars Series.
Gross National Product (extract)
- Gross National
Product
- General Narration Performed
- Nationally Produced by a Gross Product
- Gross Negation Permitted
- The Gross Ones in this Nation of Products
- What makes me Gross?
Why Aren't I National?
Should I become a Product?
- Of how I became gross in this nation of products
- Of how this nation produces products for the gross
- Gross Nations in search of products
- The story of something very gross
deeply national
almost a product
- so gross... so national that they made it into a product
- Grossly written. Nationally produced
- Looking for the gross. Trying to be national. In search of a product
- She likes me gross. She likes me national.
- Produced by a national gross product
- Produced by the national gross
- National products for the gross
- Who makes the products? In what nation? It's getting gross