| BELIEVE
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 exual
identity, does it have any importance for you? Have you never dreamed of
changing yourself into a man? 0rIan: No way! I love being a woman. Lots of people ask me this question but I'd feel really uncomfortable to have those twenty centimetres of flesh between my thighs. I once transformed Gustave Courbet's work 'L'Origine du Monde' by getting a man to pose for it, a fat hairy man with small genitals but bandaged up and I called it 'L'Origine de la Guerre'. So you see, I think they're scary, those twenty centimetres of flesh! What would I do if I had them? Go to war? Kill? Rape? I've no wish to cross over to the other side. I've always said that I am 'unfemme'and 'une homme'because I consider that the two facets are already there in a very integrated fashion in my personality. Isn't there a risk though that we'll see a transcendence of genders in the future with these physical manipulations? 0rIan: More and more young people in the world of cyberciilture are rejecting the stereotype images of man or woman and opting for an androgyne look. What's more, its sometimes difficult to know whether they're boys or girls. This kind of distinction has been completely exploded, and a good thing too! One does not need to be a female or male caricature to have one's own identity, an identity that's not imposed on you beforehand. Vvrhat's strange is that, in a pioneering sector like fashion, they continue to deal out the same old clich~s! Wa I t e r: As a designer, I respect the physical differences but don't accentuate them. One season I had all my models wearing helmets so one couldn't tell whether they were girls or boys. My aim was to show that everything that has to do with sexual behaviour comes from the sociocultural environment of one's early childhood and that, this being so, it's almost impossible to change anything. For that matter it's not my aim to operate at that level. I think there are other things that are much more important to alter in the system of fashion than stereotypes. Walter, why did you choose to call the book that celebrates your ten years in fashion Mutilate? WaIter: I did it for several reasons. First of all because this book that's one of a series of artists' books, consists essentially of images that I've perforated, cut up and subverted and which, through this mutilation, have produced a truly expressive interaction. Secondly, because for me fashion with all its things that are impossible to wear is often synonymous with mutilation. And thirdly, because that's also the way I work. I'm the kind of designer that follows his instinct rather than established trends. So, sure, it sometimes happens that I break taboos but, if I do, I don't do it in any way deliberately. |
Is
it because you break taboos, Orlan, that the general public sees your Carnal Art as an act of mutilation? 0rIan: It's not a question of mutilation since everything I've done to my body has involved adding to it, not subtracting. The trend of my operations, as I see them, is more to remove a mask in order to add on what I reahy feel I am. When I was adolescent and began looking at myself in the mirror, I was always very surprised to see the reflection of a charming young girl, projecting all the normal criteria of seduction that men go for, while at the same time I experienced myself from within as totally different: a rebel in full revolt and very critical of the adult world. It bothered me that I could not physically perceive these character traits. The fact that I have been able to undertake these operations without having any problem with them - whatever the result may be! - is effectively because what is inscribed in my flesh is difference. WaIter: I never saw Orlan's Camal Art as an act of masochism but as one of freedom, making it possible to look the way one wants to be. In taking Orlan's work off in another direction, that of the show, don't you get the feeling, Walter, that you've made a banal version of the committed activity of the artist? WaIter: No, because it was an act of homage, I wasn't redirecting her work; and because the opposite is also true that Orlan, through the whole nature of her work, refers to fashion as well. 0rIan: If you look at my work from the beginning, you will see that clothes have always been a subject to me. All my surgical operations, moreover, took as their departure point a text by a Lacanian psychoanalyst in the book La Robe on the idea of 'coupure'(2) and 'couture'. What gave me the idea for my performance was a passage entitled, La seconde peau - the second skin - which says that one only has one skin all one's life and that this is disappointing because one never is what one has. Well, I thought that in our epoch, it is possible by harmonizing the exterior and interior images by means of aesthetic surgery to give the lie to psychoanalysis and to religion that forbids one to touch one's body. On each occasion the clothes that I and the surgical team and my assistants wear were made to measure by a designer. I've always enjoyed working with people who are specialists in their field and whose state of mind is close to mine. |
