Umut Cocln’s proposal for the Aura platform is loaded with drag empowerment. It is evident, it is a clear message that is perceived right when we observe the pieces and find out their titles. However, what lies beyond the appearance of these images?
In the end, even if an essence of drag does exist, the sustenance of (almost) everything consists in the outfit, because when the queens are not in drag, the action of dragging turns into the advent of the non-event. Drag means appearing in a certain fashion to the sight, the surface incarnates an identification. That is determining. Nonetheless, what makes every queen unique, what grants her a oneness, is her outfit. The expression comes from fitting out, meaning providing someone or something, a ship for example, with the necessary equipment for a certain task, in this case: exploring the world. At the same time, the word “expedition” has a background in warfare. In Latin, expeditionem implied a military enterprise, a campaign against an enemy. That is why the puncturing, penetrating aspect of the piece She can beat me but she can’t beat my outfit draws attention. Meaning that the essence of the visual, the surface, the appearance, sustain a way of facing the world.
Another piece, titled Just got vaccinated, speaks to us in the language of a blunt contemporaneity, being sort of a portrait that may remind us of an earring, a pendant, a sperm cell or simply a hanging head. It has, just like the previous image, a threatening and sharp texture, but its face mask, almost a big smile, turns tempting at the same time, there is something that seems funny. In our times of pandemics and vaccines, most of us are oblivious to what the virus actually is and, even more so, how vaccines are put together, what they consist of; some doctors and pharmaceutics may know, at any rate, the substance that penetrates us. But that hanging head, is it the substance of the vaccine or is it, on the contrary, someone who was vaccinated? Whatever the case, the vaccination, the act of being pierced by a needle and having a substance introduced, awakens a certain euphoria in that enticing smile which, probably, has little or nothing to do with Covid.
And, finally, we have the piece that most directly interpellates the spectator, because the tongues of blue fire that envelop the image, the colors and the position of the body exhibited, and even the title claim attention. But I’m the picture of productivity, a role model for future generations, a beacon is not only such a claim. The figure consists of a flaming mane of hair, or a wig, perhaps, whose threads coincide with that of its tail, which, due to its nudity, may stem from a plug: a sexual artifice, a toy, a fetish. Its shoes, the other thing that covers an extent of its skin, apart from the makeup and the hair, evoke the idea of a certain pain with each step, most of all for the sentient beings that may fall at its feet. This role model suggests an example to follow, a light showing the way: a beacon. The one stemming from its navel. After that, there are these cubes/screens that contain, reflect and produce multiple spirals, the first imagination of the labyrinth. Then, that luminous thread that sprouts from its abdomen relates, perhaps unconsciously, to the one Ariadne handed to Theseus. However, the theme here is not a labyrinth inhabited by a minotaur, nor several labyrinths and minotauruses, but plenty of simultaneous spirals: the picture of productivity. What seems to be revealed to us by this image is disseminated in multiple labyrinths that lay ahead of it, that which would serve as a guide is emerging from the body in drag, from its belly, the innards it holds within, the place of intuition and tragedy: the navel — another spiral, in its own fashion.
Finir
