the anatomy of desire
performance and installation
by Lauriane Daphne Carl and itchi aka Jan Fleischer
2021
600 x 400 x 400 cm
reinforcing steel, acrylic nails, rhinestones, wax, chain, thread, plastic, fabric, flower, latex, silicone, rotation motor
The anatomy of desire examines the internalised violence of over-sexualisation and being made a woman when you are actually human, in the context of a dialectic between desire and destruction. Or, to put it differently: the dehumanising part of becoming a woman, since we are not born as one. So what is femininity outside of all its projections?
The anatomy of desire is uncovering a dysfunctional body of misogyny. Its spine is the structure of desire: we want what we can’t have; we want what we feel we deserve. This is in combination with the overachievers amongst the agents of misogyny especially dangerous, who are so actively trying to preserve heteropatriarchal law and order.
Their entitlement of taking is connected to damaged self-worth that needs to be overcompensated. What they desire so much, they want to destroy even more when it is not given to them.
Statistically speaking, violence linked to feelings of rejection (such as acid attacks for example) and intimate partner or family-related killings of women, girls and other female coded bodies are globally on the rise.* The coveted object is devalued or destroyed.
In the aftermath of societal standards building on these fucked up structures, we learn to desire what destroys us because this is what we think genuine desire looks like, for we are confusing aggression with love.
The spine of the structure of desire is surrounded by the flesh of a moral economy: women are expected to give moral goods such as care, nurture, love, life etc. whereas men take them.**
This flesh of moral economy supports the spine of the structure of desire in its harming actions of lashing out, strangulating and holding the whole god damn humanity hostage — being the dysfunctional body of misogyny.
Within the body of Daphne’s mind, itchi is performing as the manifestation of violence or the embodiment of an inner demon. itchi is being born inside the mind-body and evolves over time while carelessly disrupting its birthed environment by taking on objects and destroying others. As a creation of the mind, itchi appears as powerful - yet fragile - as they move between a play of sensuality and brutality.
*Down Girl - Catherine Manne
** UNODC global study on homicide 2019
I’ve been craving the utopia of a bodiless body
when little stumps appeared on your chest, growing out of it both sides like cancer boils,
killing the human you were, making you a woman
Your mother won’t cut off the boils cause it won’t change your destiny of never being enough
Of being desired too much and possibly killed for that
It wouldn’t change the fact that you are not a woman
[Britney song playing] I’m not a giiiiirl not yet a womaaaaan still not a womaaaannnnn never enough of a woman not enough love to give to be a woman
not enough children to kill to be a woman
not enough dicks to fuck to be a woman
not enough beatings took to be a woman
or enough tears cried to be a woman
not enough patience left to be a woman
not enough nagging did to be a woman
not enough caring done to be a woman
not enough fucks given to be your woman
but you want that freedom that makes me a human
to put in a cage and make me your woman/demon
next to the other encaged spirits
to collect and watch die
in your Sammelsurium of broken humans