Flystrips
"Flystrips," 1996-97
Mixed media Variable dimensions This installation was originally produced as a commissioned piece for Fotofeis: The International Photography Festival of Scotland, in 1997. The Flystrips were hung in a large subterranean exhibition/performance space called "The Arches" in the city of Glasgow. The Flystrips are translucent, golden and shiny, like honey. When illuminated by directed light, they resemble suspended strips of stained glass. The strips are affected by ambient wind current and twirl around slowly when approached. On close inspection, the small images become recognizable. The Flystrips were made from commercially produced common household flycatchers, which are combined with public-domain pornographic images downloaded from the Internet. The images cover a myriad of sexual genres, both commercially and amateur-produced, that have been posted throughout the Internet. In this way, the Flystrips document the plentiful spectrum of sex on the Internet by presenting the content objectively-- prurient, repulsive and humorous at the same time. There is an oral/orifice connection between flies and us. Flies are attracted to our food and our excrement--the things that go in and come out of our bodies. In turn, we are attracted to images of things going in and coming out of our bodies. Exploring our orifices is the basis of sexual imagery. The adhesive on the strips is active and will collect flies while fresh. Metaphorically, the sticky paper attracts flies the way pornography exerts an attraction to people—except in the case of the flies, the attraction is fatal. Prior to the piece made for Fotofeis, I produced a number of prototypes and small-scale experiments to evaluate the materials. I had these flystrips hanging in the studio space to catch annoying flies. Staring at them day in and day out, at some point I realized that in the act of landing, the flies were making their mark -- with their bodies. The strips are infused with a glue, which also seeps into any paper of cloth. After making a few landing strips on plain paper (a first generation), I felt that they needed something, something like content. From a performance piece entitled, "Smoke on the Water" I had on hand a box of pornographic magazine from the 1970s onward. I made a few Flystrips with magazine pages and then just magazine photos. These second-generation Flystrips included the "bleed-through" of text or image from the reverse of the page, creating an effect like a double-exposure in traditional photography. In 1996, curator Alasdair Foster saw these magazine Flystrips represented in 35MM slides, and invited me to produce a commissioned piece for Fotofeis 1997. At the time, the public Internet was relatively new and parts of the Web were awash in pornography. That seemed a perfect match. |
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