How can the Personal be Political in Art?

Many working artist find an interesting juxtaposition to our personal politics in art, yet we find no way around it; often it embodies us and our work. Many develop alter ego personalities or personas’ to help them deal with this identity dilemma. Allowing this alter ego to take the critical action and activist role in our political nature, while protecting the fragile social creature, which must interact daily.

JanedaPain is my political persona that I developed as an alias for my artistic pursuits. Its is actually a name that was given to me in second grade. I’ve always been a ‘pain’ in the ass; I’ve always been political, outspoken, and an activist.

However at first I did not recognize this name, I did not like to be called JanedaPain, and I hated the song that my classmates created about me. I hated to be made fun of.

“JanedaPain the dodo brain, flush her down the toilet drain. Make her go a million miles, fall in love with Rockford Files.”

As a woman, as a girl, I often found myself struggling to keep up and even striving to over achieve my male peers. I participated in many programs at the local planetarium in Eugene, Oregon where I learned computers, astronomy and art. I also participated in political action groups on the campus of University of Oregon, and Portland State.

If there was something to fight for, if there was some kind of political agenda, then I would speak, march, sit-out, publish and create a scene to express my political stance. Activist like the Yes Men became my idols, with multimedia political stunts to capture mass media attention. I don’t know where I learned it, I’m not sure what inspired me to be such a fighter, such an activist, but I’ve always been interested in this kind of work and expression.

We have to respect our politics has humans, and my politics tell me to be honest with my opinions and my voice. I will stand and speak when ever I feel it to be necessary, even if I stand alone. I believe it is my duty as a citizen to engage in political and critical discourse to further the consciousness of our human existence.

I am a political being who chooses to engage in a critical dialogue through my persona and my art as a way to communicate to the masses. I find that my political persona is easier to accept through my art. My audience is able to relate personally to my politics and to the politics of our social nature, which I choose to comment on through art and critical public dialog.

I seek to question my peers and loved ones as I directly engage them, requiring them to respond and interact with my art. I am a leader in my community for women and technology and I strive to keep this techno-feminism growing into a greater political forum.

My art often comments on the gender gap in technology and science. I pose questions to society through my art concerning the feminine identity and the male dominated field of Art and Technology for which I strive to create my political identity.

In my video work ‘lil self portraits’ I explore my identity as a sexual object, this is a political statement concerning feminism. My ability to be powerful, smart, beautiful and sexy in the wake of my work in technology. In these short videos you see me exploring my sexual feminine power. I express my frustration with the feminist culture and how it has corrupted my view of the goddess and sexual desire.

With ‘lil self portraits’ I pushed the boundaries of my sexual identity by presenting myself as an erotic, goddess of provocative nature. Yet in a juxtaposition, I am also shown in my sweats, working as a visual artist in the local community. I was a real person, not a doll, or a sexual object, as shown in contrast.

I grew up with a feminist mother always telling me that nobody will take me serious if they see me as a sexual object, first. I grew up thinking I had to hide my body, and that I couldn’t be sexy if I was to be taken seriously. ‘lil self portraits’ comments on those boundaries, and explores those issues through self portrait videos, displayed as a net art piece on my web site.

lil self portraits:
janedapain.net/selfportraits.htm

I comment politically through my art, through the subjects I employ, as they relate personally to my life. There is no moral aesthetic to be achieved, there is no ideal in reality, especially in my reality. I’ve explored feminism, racism, discrimination, war, terrorism, and self and society. There are so many subjects of politics within my art, it’s hard to pin point my art to one subject or genre. Just as it would be hard to do that with so many artist of today who work in multimedia formats.

I find that my work reflects politics in personal as well as societal spaces. And it is the subject of great controversy to many different groups of people. According to Haacke, “[s]o-called ‘avant-garde art’ is at best working close to the limitations set by its cultural/political environment, but it always operates within that allowance.”

Like Banksy, or the Yes Men, their art has to work within a certain set of anonymous parameters or they will not be able to continue their work as guerrilla artist. It is their duty to work within the parameters that exist the legal boundaries, realizing them, and bending, or breaking them with precise intent. These artist ‘operate within that cultural/political allowance’. Yet also at the same time commenting on the system they are bound by, making their work that much more profound.

In my own work I have pushed the boundaries, yet still working within them. My creation of the Interactive Parental Digitizer, was one of these culture questioning pieces. This piece explores the different aspects of parenting, and decision making, through an new media, digital narrative. This piece became great controversy in the Burning Man community in 2004, soon after my son Jared attended the festival and created his own political persona, ‘The Cusskid’.

Interactive Parental Digitizer:
digiru.com/ipd

Blog Article about ‘Interactive Parental Digitizer’:
articlesbyjdap.blogspot.com/2004....html

In this piece I explore the questions parents face when parenting. I explored and questioned the users personal and social boundaries, through film and new media by pushing the viewer to participate in a series of questions.

However the discussion that prevailed on public forums and discussion boards far exceeded my interest into the results of my own work. I used this process to help me solve this political and personal issue I had with parenting. And I’m just glad to be sparking some political discourse in my community, because I think the dialogue has to continue for growth to expand personally and politically within my community.

Freedom from being confined in society, freedom from conforming to these rules, is what we seek through our political discourse. JanedaPain the artist is exempt from this, I have created a persona which can speak freely, and this discourse can be seen as JanedaPain not Jane Crayton. There is this sense of security for my public persona, this sense of power and privilege.

How to Sustain our Future, is a new media film made with my friend Katastraphonik’s music. I created a film in the Adbuster remixed media style commenting on our current social, economic, environmental and political situation. It is a political piece, it is a piece that reflects my beliefs, and my wish to use my art as a catalyst to educate people. I feel I have a lot to offer my network of people though my art. I feel there are so many things to comment on, the will never be enough time.

How 2 Sustain our Future:
janedapain.net/how2sustain.html

Technology and media are power in today’s market and in our community. We can affect and change people, we can manipulate truth, and distort realities into ideals, or we can present reality without bias, from our personal perception to simply document our histories. I think we have a responsibility to represent the perspective of our realities, any way we see it. Our creative response is our only limitation, and its personal to our own reference frame.

On the front page of my web site I have a short statement, a short poem, prose, which describes my work, which describes me, and my politics.

“identities are nothing short of a name times a face divided by an attitude at the square root of the observer. art is a place where i can explore and express the different identities that create me. i am an artist, poet, scientist, athlete, inventor, theorist, student, feminist, naturalist, parent, sister, daughter, friend, and what ever else i decide to be today or in the future. so as i travel this long twisted road through this perceptive reality of my reference frame, least i can do is document it….”

This is an important political statement for my persona JanedaPain. This statement embodies the idea that I can create and comment on everything, because it is from my perspective, which is unique to me, like my fingerprint.

Our political agendas are unique to us, just like our perspective from which it developed. There is no separating the persona from the political. There is a form of controversy in every work that is created, from some point of view. It can be personally political, which can engage critical dialog in the intended or unintended audience, or it can question society, or be questioned by it. What ever form the political agenda takes, I think we need to embrace our poetic justice through art, and see it as our leading form of activism and respectively in opposition as propaganda.

May we not forget that for each yen there is a yang, for each left a right, for each beginning an end. And so continues the cycle, which is why it is important to keep creating, to keep expressing our own personal perceptions. We thus have to accept propaganda as its opposition to political discourse.

It is our schizophrenia mind set that keeps us from really allowing our subconscious to examine our political mindset and express it thoroughly. We are torn between the ideal and the real, between the right and the wrong. Because with every positive there is a negative, and we can not create all positive all the time, we can not be successful, we have to accept that there will be some political agenda implemented always because it is our nature to create political discourse propaganda and art.