Blog Post Reading #4 + AnthropoScenes

Here I am reading another blog post. This post was written on March 26, 2006, the day after I did my first Human Body Project performance. It's entitled "Post-nakedness (1): support and embracing awkwardness"



Also, here are some videos from the AnthropoScene Collective's first two AnthropoScenes!

An Article from an Audience Member a Few Years Back

A few years ago, an author tried to sell this story but, shock of shocks, couldn't so she recently allowed me to post it on my blog – which is, of course, followed by mainstream news outlets and Woody Allen fans everywhere. (Not.)

People think I'm brave to deal with cancer. But cancer gives no one a choice. Every cancer sufferer is forced to be brave. 

As the person in question, I'd like to point out that I'm much braver to be the Human Body Project lady for the last 10 years. I mean, read the first paragraph.

I'd also like to connect a couple of dots. How women are supposed to look is a place of projection in a male-dominated culture, it is a way of devaluing the feminine and the necessity of dealing with vulnerability. This is at the heart of every problem we face: power and ego over love and cooperation.

Thanks to Thelma Fayle for sharing this article.

The Human Body Project

by Thelma Fayle

When she slowly steps in front of the audience, without even wearing shoes, Tasha Diamant reveals herself to be a plain-looking, naked woman with a couple of C-section scars and plenty of hair in places where the Prada girls have none. She has small sagging breasts and dimpled thighs and a pear-shaped, sturdy-looking body. 

The 49-year-old visual and performance artist seems slightly nervous in the way one might be before doing a high-dive off a cliff.  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath and captures a dignified, but still tentative, composure. She explains to the three-dozen audience members of the Fringe Theatre Festival on an island off of the West Coast of Canada – how she came to create the Human Body Project.

“In so many facets of our lives, we forget how vulnerable we humans are,” Diamant says, “and this project reminds me.”  The mother/artist/educator explains that in spite of her discomfort, she is determined to give this unscripted 90-minute presentation at least once a year for the rest of her life. Unscripted, as she is determined to maintain an open heart and a healthy dialogue with the audience in her effort to use her body to create a visceral experience of shared vulnerability.

Before Diamant arrives on stage, a 5 ft tall cardboard cutout, depicting a naked Diamant from her first Human Body Project presentation six years ago, gives the audience a chance to stare at the life-size photo and to climatise themselves before being faced with an excruciatingly bare presence on stage.

The artist welcomes the audience to look closely at her body. She speaks quietly but with strength and walks up and down the center aisle of what was once a church and is now a venue for community presentations. “Please feel free to look at my body,” she coaches. 

Given permission, timid eyes that have been respectfully focused mostly on Diamant’s face, begin to peek below.  Diamant is everywoman – not remotely proportioned to any Barbie doll ideal.

When someone asks a question, she approaches them and warmly shakes hands.  She puts people at ease.  She helps the audience to become comfortable with a plain old, magnificent, aging body.

Her well-documented project shows her foray on stage during her full-bellied pregnancy – an experience that re-affirmed her need to talk about the collective vulnerability that our culture denies and hides in the shadows of life’s many little 21^st Century femme façades of hair-dye and implants and face-glitter and push-up bras and tattoos – just to name a few.

The more she talks the more refreshing it is to listen to her. She mourns what she sees as the “amputation of empathy and connectedness in our society”.

She talks about the impact of having children in her life. Motherhood was a powerful catalyst; only unlike many parents who quite naturally become focused on their own children to the exclusion of all else, Diamant was moved to have a larger discussion with the world through her art.

“How do you feel about your body?” an audience member asks.

“I just try not to go to that place of judgment,” she responds. The way she responds with hesitation reveals her tenuousness bordering on insecurity about her body and also her decision to direct herself away from that same insecurity that plagues almost all women who have been trained to self-hate by years of looking at magazine pictures of what women are supposed to look like but never do.

Watching Tasha Diamant’s 90-minute Fringe Festival presentation reminds me of a line in a movie called Kamataki, where a young man asks an old man if the elder thinks the woman in a magazine is beautiful. The wise elder man slowly looks at the picture and then at the young man and says:  ”I don’t know if she is beautiful”.

The Human Body Project offers its audience a chance to answer the same question as they examine a naked, intelligent and articulate 49-year-old woman.

"Is she beautiful?”

Absolutely. And unlike the Emperor who got fooled, this Empress knows she is naked and she wants you to look at her.

Diamant is a genuine, un-altered woman.

Some "Minutes" from the December Human Body Project Workshops

Is it a sense
of duty
Is it a sense
of obligation
Is it a sense
of caring
Is it the appropriate place
to be
Yes to all of the above
Vulnerability is important
Vitally important
to the survival
of her creation

Doff it
Only if it
is
sooo hot
that
I'm
uncomfortable
she turned 
up the heat
and I began
to sweat

she wants to
tease out
the shame
in her
despair

divorce

out of control
psychopathy
20% are awake
transnational murder
escalates
community kitchens
respond
peace on earth
goodwill to all
happy holy days ya all

one of the problems is people actually believe they are stimulus-response creatures when in fact we are something other than Pavlov's dog

one of the problems is one person's fucked-up is another's paradise

-------

you always look so depressed

Christmas is a family time

You don't know you're beautiful

I am a holy person

-------

apple     bareness       caring         deliberate
anger     balderdash    curing         deep
angst     blaming         courteous   deepening

Workshop Contributions: "I am coming out as a holy person."

Some contributions from today's workshop. Next workshop is on November 19, 7-9 pm, 660 Discovery St. (Victoria). Thank you to everyone who attended. It was an honour to spend that healing time with you all.

Words I said and wrote:

I am struggling with words.
How can we use language when it is the language from the culture of domination?
Tired of having to explain.
Tired of trying to explain.
Tired of explanations.

I am coming out as a holy person.

Intention
Sacred 
Holy person
Vulnerable 
Compassion

DEEP

judgment
pain
self-rejection
inability to explain

healing

From a participant:

I definitely needed the silence today. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in all of the talking, explanations and proclamations. It is important to me to float away with my own thoughts in the presence of other people.

Sometimes I feel tricked into listening.

Sometimes I feel like I have tricked other people into listening to me.

I feel the best when I am one of a group of passionate listeners, when there is no subtext, when it feels like silence.

From another:

STANDING in the light of vulnerability
Casting a shadow on humanity
Thinking of the social box into the soul box

From another:

I must say that when
I noticed
this opportunity
HUMAN BODY PROJECT
a workshop
I thought
there will be a
line up
a commitment
of participants
for the
duration
an opportunity
for healing

the commitment
or
committed
or
commitable
one
is 
Tasha

extreme
commitment
committed
this is
performance art

when one uses
themselves
that is
what it is
the
artist
is present
the 
artist
is
a 
present


be
silent for awhile
silence is
called for
by me.
all saints
all souls
all naked
3 November 2012

the children
keep her
here
how many
women
stay for
the children
in how
many
situations
how long
has this been going on

this is a
calling
this is a masters' program
what she
is
mastering
is her struggle
it's love
not icky love

powerless
surrendered
love

clear thinking
endangered
species

"my desire on
this earth
is to be so authentic," says Tasha

how is that possible
with abusive systems

the only
thing
missing
is
health...

"nakedness
is my
job for God," she says

learning 
at its
best is
fun
energizing
ecstasy

what am I doing
in this room
with these artists
talking
listening
getting a headache

i'm here because
it's important
very appropriate
to be supportive
to show i care

i am here because
there is something
more for me to do
that is ancient
and unclear
at the moment

i am here to
help without
harming myself
in the process

i am here to be
helpful and 
supportive

here are
words on
paper
you're
the artist
sort it out!

"the wish list contains only love": Poem by a Human Body Project Workshop Participant

having lunch with her family
the secret sauce dripped
down her belly
and filled
her navel

simultaneously she has a broader vision

the vulnerability of eden
created anew

the wish list contains 
only love

Jason Schreurs Reviews The Human Body Project in CVV

I’ve reviewed Tasha Diamant’s The Human Body Project a number of times, and despite it being an unscripted discussion group rather than a standard theatre production, it’s become a very important part of the Victoria Fringe Fest the past few years. Those who have attended Diamant’s session have walked away with mixed results. Some leave before the full 90-minute session ends, feeling awkward about how a naked lady standing at the front of a room creates an atmosphere for more direct, instinctual conversations about issues that can create feelings of discomfort: vulnerability, fear, love, frustration, despair and hope (to name a few). And others feel as though the 90 minutes have passed in a blink. Yet another brave few choose to get vulnerable alongside Diamant by shedding their own outside layers and adding more unclothed humanity to the proceedings. This year was my turn.

Yes, from the first time I’d attended The Human Body Project (I believe this was my sixth or seventh session), I’ve had a knot in my stomach urging me to break through my fears and become vulnerable. For a number of reasons I probably shouldn’t get into while fully clothed and writing Fringe reviews on a Greyhound bus, I’ve never felt comfortable to get naked in public before (as an act of protest, naturism or any other reason), but this time I knew earlier in the day that at the end of the night I would be up there, naked, in front of a Fringe audience. It’s not about any kind of exhibitionism, or some desperate need to be truly seen, it’s simply about taking everything off and admitting that we cannot control anything in life. We can only do our best in every choice we make and commit to bringing happiness and love and peace to ourselves and others. Whether you remain clothed or not, The Human Body Project is especially helpful if you are attempting to overcome some pretty serious shit, and that applies to all of us, innit?

by Jason Schreurs in CVV, August 2012

cvvmagazine.com review of The Human Body Project, Victoria Fringe 2012

An essay about The Human Body Project at the 2011 Victoria Fringe contributed by Donald Brennan

“The Human Body Project” 

Victoria Fringe Festival  2011 

by Donald Brennan

I went to this event curious of people’s reactions and impressions about being naked in public. I knew the performer was going to be nude, but she was not billed as a bombshell stripper and I wasn’t interested in attending a superficial strip tease. This event had every indication, instead, of being visceral and the performer outwardly candid. It would be, to excuse the innuendo, doubly revealing. The audience might be invited to disrobe, too. I wasn’t certain of what I would do in that case. I rushed after a hot yoga class to get to the venue on time and wondering several things. What are the ramifications and complications around a lone naked woman talking about the experience in front of a clothed audience? What kind of responses does it trigger in people, especially nowadays? How difficult is it for a naked person to remove their nudity from the realm of sexuality and create a “transformative and healing theatre of encounter?” As a concept for initiating discussion and creating controversy, it’s hardly novel. Nudity in performance art is fairly standard practice. Would it be a disastrous catharsis of self-indulgent emoting in a manner more fitting for private therapy? Or would there be an intelligently provocative evening with insights about nature and culture coming out of the concept of nakedness?

Diamant is a 49-year old mother of two who, in her desire to be an agent of social change for the well being of those who are most vulnerable in society (women, children, and the homeless), chooses to stand exposed to all, eliciting dialogue from the audience as she relates her feelings about what she is doing in the moment. She stands in a long line of like-minded performance artists seeking an intimate and different experience. Her nudity could be construed as confrontational to those people who take offence at what they perceive as being brazen behaviour. It is plain from the outset that this is a woman who comes to grips with vulnerability by being vulnerable in solidarity. She makes her entrance straight off with no preamble, no demonstrative shedding of clothes, no expected warning of ‘I am going to get naked now.’ She just steps out, wearing nothing but glasses and a smile while silently surveying the audience of approximately 40 people. She looks more like a grade school teacher than a practiced actress. Disarmingly ordinary and unabashedly sincere. She says hello. A few of us say hello back. It’s a moment of awkwardness, almost sublime in the myriad of possibilities. An absurdist playwright would have a field day with it. It’s also a moment of reckoning. This is the advent of the experience and the tone is irrevocably set from here on in as each audience she has “performed” in front of create their own dynamic between themselves and her, the focus “performer,” or facilitator. She relaxes somewhat, saying that she is happy to see smiling faces and not grim, confrontational looks. Already, we are intimates drawing into a centre of trust. She feels the need to apologize for not having a script or a set routine, suggesting that she has faced confused Fringe audience-goers in the past who have walked in without a clue of what the show is about. Her admission of unpreparedness warms up the audience further, bringing the initial tension of expectation between her and the audience down to something sympathetic, conversational and familiar. We are never quite nullified to the level of just a casual gathering, but the audience, if that is what we might be called, soon feel inclined to start addressing questions to her.

Out of curiosity and simple questions of why, what and where comes a seemingly disparate yet connected dialogue detailing our reactions, her views and feelings, and our collective state of mind. What’s the point, you may ask, and why naked? You would think she might enjoy exposing herself if she engages in such a production. But it’s the perfect “costume” for what she intends. This is, after all, an event meant to reclaim and revalidate humanity through frank conversation, and what more pointed way to do this than to bare all, literally embodying humanness, as it were? And the physical nakedness isn’t as important as just stepping out of our defensive comfort zones, out of what I said was our “siege mentality,” a comment she liked. She says she is highly nervous being naked in front of people, despite doing this for several years now. On top of it, she says she finds being openhearted more difficult than being just naked. She is not a habitual exhibitionist, and says she would actually prefer not to have to do this. (And even if she is a practicing nudist or naturist, it has to be asked what difference would it make? Should she be judged with all the accompanying presumptions if she was comfortable being naked? ) That she feels compelled to do this is testament to the urgency of her fervent desire to foster an atmosphere of open dialogue.

She first mounted the event in Lethbridge in 2006 and has vowed to present it annually until her death. No doubt, she wants to upend notions of concealment of the aging body when she performs in the future. Facilitating such a controversial piece in conservative Alberta must have been something of a challenge, possibly at some personal cost to her own safety. She and her husband, David, whom she points out is in the audience, have recently moved to Victoria from Lethbridge where she taught at the college. (It is plain that her husband supports her in her ideas and executions.)

What Diamant au natural taps into is intimacy, and not sexual intimacy. With full frontal focus, she becomes the “Other,” in a twist illustrating the Hegelian concept that Simone de Beauvoir elaborated upon. Diamant is the one, at least for a time, not like the rest of us and so she gets our attention. (Yet, perversely, if I can use that term, she is obviously us under our clothes.) There is also the phenomenon of our attention being held because of her situation, and similar to the final words of a dying person, her words carry weight and gravitas precisely because she is so vulnerable. Here is a naked woman talking to a group of clothed people. More than getting our attention, her nudity is a reminder, and a challenge, that we are thoughtful, compassionate and sensitive human beings and we are to address ourselves as such, especially when we are undressed. In her vulnerability, the audience, unless they are completely callow, find their own vulnerability. It’s no surprise that many of our expressions for fostering open dialogue and honest communications are couched in terms of exposing ourselves. Diamant says she tends to listen more rather than engage in debate or arguments when she’s naked. (And so we would naturally, once we lose the armour of our clothes.) As each of us comment and ask her questions, she reaches out to hold our hands as she listens, saying she finds the physical contact reassuring. (Is this also a move to assure us she is an engaged person, not a remote and detached nude simply parading about?)

We talk about her entrance. Diamant says she has thought about disrobing on stage but this has the stigma of stripping for entertainment and money. The very act of removing clothes in public view is such a convention for building sexual suspense that it is difficult to separate commercial titillation from the uniquely sincere, as one elderly gentleman pointed out. If we were artists anticipating a life drawing class, it would be another matter entirely, and we’d be rolling up our sleeves for a working session. Context is everything; here we are contemplating this naked woman in our presence, but in relating to her empathetically, talking with her and learning what she feels, we are removed from the dynamic associated with having ‘paid to just see a naked woman.’ The conundrum is that we have paid for nudity, in a way. Ahh, but we’re also curious to SEE an audience SEEING a naked woman, and the resultant reactions and dialogue. And something not touched upon in this particular evening, though Diamant may have encountered it before in previous discussions, is the whole aspect of nakedness versus nudity.

In a brave and brilliant stroke near the beginning, she also says she knows it can be as awkward to look at a naked person up close as it is to be naked up close, and in that spirit, she announces she hereby bestows permission for people to stare, and walks down the centre aisle. It’s also a humorous moment, as if we need to get this over with, but it also subtly encourages people to side with her, to feel empathy and open ourselves up. “It may be mine that you’re looking at, but it’s yours, too,” she says, her gender generalization forgivable as she paces in front to both sides of the theatre, the purging and absence of shame putting us at ease with viewing her unadorned, “non-surgically altered” (except for a caesarean) 49-year-old-mother’s body. Never does she raise her arms or pirouette around. “It’s real,” she says, “and so be real.” No shaving for her (except for legs, I notice.) She makes reference to the oddity it is as difficult for some people to talk about nudity as it is to see nudity. Some members of the audience refrain from speaking, whether in introspective contemplation or inhibited restraint. “We live intimately in the world and our skin is our connection to others and to the environment,” says Diamant. Her underlying belief is that there is disconnection between the world and our humanity. We’ve cut ourselves off from feeling, and she fervently believes this is the source of almost every sociological ailment of this “deeply troubled planet that our children are inheriting.” She says she has the hope for engaged audiences to discuss and participate, striving for shared responsibility. That being said, she adds that two men once joined her naked on stage, one standing on each side of her, but their presence suggesting naked bodyguards caused friction and agitation in the room. Apparently, they were perceived by women in the audience as threatening, the women who attend this possibly more feminist oriented than most. That is an inescapable aspect about this event, and it is how being naked in this context is essentially pro-feminist, and rejection of patriarchal conformity. (I question whether it’s a successful jump to conclusion to say, as Diamant did, that her actions are also against “linear, male-dominated thought” and all that is “compartmentalized and competitive, rather than conscious and cooperative.” Gender politics are never quite as simple as easy labels and groupings.)

Out of discussing that it is natural to be open-hearted when one is bereft of clothes, and Diamant “wanting to take myself and audience beyond comfort zones and learn a different way of cohabiting our planet” and that “eventually, I may have an audience who will all join me naked and we will walk out on to the street” comes the inevitable question put to the audience; who will join her in being naked? It is actually a young woman in the audience who requests Diamant to ask us. The young woman says she wants to hear the invitation spoken aloud. She’s possibly fed up with all the intellectualizing and wants to see if people are committed to what they are saying.

I decide to act, not content to just be a theorizing observer. I’m not one to shy away at such a challenge, and Diamant deserves support. I had been thinking that I might have to perform a little nude mime if I was pushed to back up my assertions that the naked self is the basis from which we all emote, the fundamental corpus of our humanity. To that end, I imagined having to strike the Vitruvian Man pose as drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, possibly getting an appreciative laugh and lightening the mood if my spoken contributions were deemed too serious and meeting resistance. Interesting that the young woman who proposes the question, an actress in another Fringe play examining sexuality and who has been active in promoting it throughout the audience discussion, fails to follow through on her challenge and remains seated. Could it be she doesn’t want to contribute too much to a production in perceived competition with her own? Then again, she may have valid and personal reasons to refrain. Still sweating and having jogged to the venue, I announce “I will” and stand up where I’m seated at the front and peel off. From being nearly naked and then naked showering a half hour before, it doesn’t feel like a large leap to just be naked again and to get some air. As I step beside the smiling Diamant, I say that I have just come from hot yoga, and “I need to cool down, anyway,” a remark that gets some laughter.

One woman stirs from the audience and moves up at the same time I do. She had been fairly prominent in the discussions and her manner of dress (full-length gloves, tight black dress striving to contain a curvaceous figure, and a lacy pill box hat), set her off from the other members of the audience. Some time into the audience discussion, I recognized her from news stories and feature profiles as the outspoken burlesque performer “Miss Rosie Bitts.” She is willing to answer Diamant’s invitation (an unanswerable challenge possibly to most of the audience) and she leaves her tall, dark male formally-dressed companion to come up to the stage. Interesting that she does not want to disrobe in front of us, but chooses to go up on stage and into the temporary wings, saying she feels more comfortable doing this behind the scenes. I can appreciate that Miss Bitts (I like her playful stage name) has professional considerations when it comes to getting nude or nearly nude in public. Her career is based on teasing with nudity and challenging boundaries, and there must be a feeling of odd contradiction if she is to strip completely and all at once without “making show.” She quickly joins us and it occurs to me that we two are suspiciously like confederates or plants in the audience. People might readily think Diamant had pre-arranged this with us because, (a); we engage in the discussions with avid interest and helped further them along; (b), we seemed so willing to get naked without hesitation; and (c), that we stripped down quickly and without fussy delay. (Miss Bitts refrains from stockings and restrictive underwear, I suppose, to keep unsightly marks from showing on her publicly displayed body.) My loose clothing and sandals on this summer evening made for simple disrobing. I leave them on my chair.

We three stand at the front bared to the public, male and female on either side of Diamant like bookends. It must make quite a symmetrical show of support, like Adam and Eve posing in the Garden of Eden (Diamant as the central figure of The Mother?) Perhaps another representational image would be the man and woman etchings on the plaques attached to the roving deep space probes, Pioneers 10 and 11. Here we are put less on display than we are willing participants in an experiment of what it means to be absent of garment demanded by society. We ponder with the audience the baring of not just our skin, but by association, the essence of exposed soul and the depth of our plain humanity. It’s not as if we automatically made more genuine by simply showing our genitals, but I do believe we show we cherish life by being unabashedly naked. In an analogy I give that Diamant said she liked, we are as permeable and sensitized as newts in the forest.

After we are welcomed and thanked by Diamant, I’m asked by one woman how I feel. When I start to reply, she offers her hand to hold, as have most of the audience members offered to Diamant while she’s talking. I walk into the audience and tell them it feels a little surreal to be doing this and that I also feel somewhat removed and distant, mostly because I am aware of the audience-performer separation (even with the hand holding.) I mention that I have had some experience performing. I can’t deny I feel I am in the performer role now, yet, to use that overworked word, it also feels indelibly “authentic.” I walk back to the front, and another woman raises the point that it is more daunting to undress in public if there are friends or partners in the audience. It is so true. In front of strangers whom one will probably never see again and in a setting conducive to non-judgemental discussion, it’s not difficult to be bare. One would think that the familiarity would make it easier for physical exposure, but it is the opposite. There is a group of five people in their twenties sitting in the front row who are keen on engaging in discussion. Behind them are several couples of varying older ages, a few single older men, one gent who looks bored and tired, some younger men and on the stage right side of the main aisle, and many older women sitting alone or with a friend. On the far right are a couple of young female Asian students who I notice are careful not to engage in eye contact with me, emphasising cultural morales and differences around nudity. A young man with a still frame camera around his neck and a video camera on a tripod stands in the small balcony. (A sign on an easel in front gives an explanation that the event is being filmed as part of the art piece.) It is in many ways a typical Fringe audience.

A couple people ask Miss Bitts about whether she feels she is working in a professional capacity or in an experiment by doing “the full Monty.” She replies that it does feel different, but also reminds people that it is perfectly natural to be nude and it is only a societal norm that makes us feel we are required to cover up. The problems society has with exhibition of the female body are manifold, of course. (And, I would add, portrayals of the male sexual organs, especially in an aroused state, are taboo altogether.) She asks the audience “we’re all born naked, so what is the big deal?” She says she finds this way of being naked very interesting. I’m sure it does feel significantly different for her, because here there is a dialogue and interaction with the audience that are absent in her traditional burlesque shows. She talks about her recent run-in with the B.C. Liquor Board shutting down her planned “Naked Women Reading (Fairy Tales)” in Fernwood due to a technicality in the licence agreement that Miss Bitts says was just an excuse by the mainstream establishment to censor her show. I remember the show closure received some press coverage earlier this year. From that experience, she put together a new production just for this year’s Fringe about her trying to put on a show of burlesque, music and theatre that is meant to explore “the politics of female nudity,” and being faced with censoring herself or getting arrested by the police. The topic gets many women talking about misunderstandings about nudity in general. Miss Bitts obviously likes to buck the trend for older woman who have had children to hide their bodies and retreat from sexuality. She encourages women to be “perfectly imperfect” with the way their bodies look and not to bow to the narrow confines of what the media portrays as a desirable woman. In her own appearance and choice of liberation through burlesque, Miss Bitts certainly promotes a playful and fun celebration of our corporal selves.

Diamant mentions that there are sketchbook pads and pencils at the front for people to make sketches or notes if they so desire. I was wondering what the pads were for and jump at the chance to catch some thoughts on the fly. (I’m not even sure I have captured a lot of the interesting salient points while writing these notes after the fact.) Miss Bitts and I sit on the edge of the stage beside Diamant and I jot down three points I wanted to remember and elaborate on; 1.) We use clothes not only to conceal our bodies, but by extension of thought, to hide our emotions, 2.) We who are naked around others who are clothed are rather like blank slates, and 3.) We may perversely form as a defence when we’re publicly naked a feeling of distance and removal. (I now know I certainly do this, and I wonder if it’s akin to the “professional distance” prostitutes say they use with clients.) There’s also a parallel with standing naked in front of a mirror and looking oneself in the eye. There are people I know who are incapable of doing such a thing. In using clothes, and as has been noted by writers such as Desmond Morris, we treat this as licence to hide our emotions and true selves. We put on our clothes as much to play roles as to become our social selves, all hidden and complex and disingenuous. When naked, we can become blank slates and we can have all sorts of things projected onto us regarding our supposed values and tendencies. Yet we are almost easier to get to know when we are so exposed, so that preconceptions can quickly be dispelled. (I personally believe that if a couple is going to have an argument, they should both be naked.)

I attempt a profile sketch of Diamant during the evening, and as usual, my life drawing skill is lamentably somewhere between cartooning and rough drafting. A few of the women have entered into more discussion about the burlesque trade with Miss Rosie Bitts. From there, the talk has led to strippers and the misconception that all strippers are supposed to be desperate and abused drug addicts who are forced into the trade by patriarchal, sexist values. As pointed out by Miss Bitts, many strippers don’t fit into this mould and, like her, greatly enjoy their work in the public eye. She mentions that in this place, the here and now, she particularly feels alive and receptive from being able to engage in stimulating dialogue with people. Who are we really beneath our clothes, she ponders. There is a palpable feeling of liberation and support in the room as people have been sharing their feelings and ideas. I speak about that to be naked in this space at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, a former church, albeit de-sanctified, is especially appropriate. It is ultimately an act of spiritual cleansing, and a fitting act of reclamation for this space.

One woman says she feels much warmth in her heart for the “bravery and honesty in the room tonight,” then stops short, speechless from emotion. Diamant pauses as she does periodically to close her eyes in silence. She continues again on the subject of motherhood. Becoming a mother was the initiative to embark on this project. She remarks that since she’s had children and has bonded with them with such great love, she feels immensely grounded. She says she doesn’t understand love songs on the radio anymore, because they speak of a love that seems far removed from the heavy, earth binding love with her children, a love that includes “blood and shit and vomit.” I’m not sure what her husband would think, but she is obviously expressing her belief that she has a deeper level of love and connection for those who came from her own body.

This is understandable, though points to life experiences that many women may have had in society today, and that is relationships with men fraught with a lack of trust and respect so that the only real deep and abiding love is felt with children. Men have largely made a mess of relating to women on a level where a double standard is absent, among other things, and it is no wonder that the mother-child bond is held as sacrosanct, the old “Virgin Mary and Jesus” bond that is supposed to outshine all others in comparison. The contemporary secular view has come around to believing romance is shallow and the only truly valid and enduring love is the love of mother and child. Cannot one person’s love as given in completely loving and conscientious sexual union be as equally elevated and “real?” When two people share the pleasures of their bodies, this can properly constitute also a sacred ‘bond of the flesh,’ with or without procreation. Still, Diamant believes in what she does, and as I am a male and not a mother obviously, I can’t know the particular bond she feels for her progeny. This is the part of the power of Diamant’s art activism piece; it’s a Rorschach test. She is honestly stating where she is coming from, and we all come away with our own fixes, our own positions we have arrived at.

Daimant does not present herself as a model of the enlightened mind that chastises and goads us to reach her seemingly liberated and evolved level. She is genuine in sharing her emotions and thoughts. She readily confesses to having many human failings. She tells us she loses her temper at times, she can be “petty and vindictive and jealous of other artists.” She admits she has a low tolerance for joyful celebrants revelling in nakedness, and says she has little empathy for women gleefully shedding clothes in her shows to be “at one with all loving peoples,” treating the event as their own new age, peace-and-love bonding session (though it does come inevitably close to being an illuminating, almost therapeutic encounter.) Diamant relates about a woman who joined her at an Edmonton show who swore in front of the audience, and then caught herself apologizing and asking permission to swear, realizing the “ridiculousness of being naked, yet asking if it’s all right if I swear,” a situation exemplifying not only the conflation of nakedness with vulgarity, but, more to the point, censorship with heartfelt, uninhibited communication.

It’s this interaction with the audience, the unscripted reactions and responses that make this show. Some critics may deride this production as being alien to the concept of theatre. Yet it is not the complete opposite of theatre, or art, for that matter. Without getting too picky on definitions, the work has the ingredients of a good theatrical experience: stimulation, provocation, revelation and a modicum of denouement. While it may be argued that “nothing happens,” there is an active frisson within the event, like a background soundtrack that keeps running throughout, to the tune of ‘this woman is naked and talking to us.’ It is never boring. The pauses and silences all have a conscientious weight. As so true of many art forms, it has the same return for how much you engage with it. If you’re conscious, curious, explorative and questioning, something intriguing can be had from it. Some people, in write-ups and web logs, consider this performance art activism to be “the most relevant and powerful” work at this year’s Fringe.

Diamant finishes by thanking us for coming and for participating. She tells Miss Bitts and me that there are standard model release forms for us to sign if we choose to, giving permission for ourselves to be shown in a publicly broadcast video. For signing this, Diamant’s husband David pays me a token $1 as part of the agreement, and Diamant gives me an information handout about following and staying connected with the project. David thanks me, too. So I may be on video as part of the Human Body Project. I think of it as an honour.

The experience makes me think of what Henry David Thoreau wrote in the essay “In Wildness is the Preservation of the World:”

“We cannot adequately appreciate this aspect of nature if we approach it

with any taint of human pretense. It will elude us if we allow artefacts like

clothing to intervene between ourselves and the Other. To apprehend it,

we cannot be naked enough.”

I hate the media for forming my views of women's bodies: a response to the Human Body Project video documentary

Hello Tasha. My name is Garry. I live in Michigan so I will never be able to actually come to one of your performances. I just watched the hour long video of some of your performances. I think our bodies are beautiful. I think everyone agrees with me on that point. What I like about your performance is your casual way you stand and talk. At first we get a little titilated but after a while, when we see you are not trying to be sexually alluring, we start wanting to know what you have to say. I hate the media for forming my views of womens bodies. They want me to veiw a woman as a toy instead of a person worth knowing. They want women to feel they should be a toy. That's why we have so many insecure women getting their breasts made larger. Usually nudity is portrayed to make us horny. But our bodies are beautiful and we are missing so much in life if we only look at nakedness for sexual reasons. We are sexual. But we are more. Thank you for sharing your body with us. I think you are a very humble woman and hope you have great success with the human body project. I hope you write back to me. I would really like to know someone like you.

Thank you, Garry.

Here's the link to the Human Body Project documentary (2010):

https://vimeo.com/user10460644/videos

What It Means to Protest Naked: a contribution from Lisa Mason

What It Means to Protest Naked

The Vulnerability Vigil is by no means the only protest that uses nakedness to portray a message. There have been many other successful protests that have taken this form. However, the message behind naked protests is a lot deeper than the initial shock of the bystander. The message behind this tactic is often powerful, important and pure.

Being naked allows people in a position of weakness to show their strength. They don’t use weapons, or violence, or anything else that requires restraining – they just come armed with their bodies in order to make a point. The best thing about naked protests is that it is never the protestor that goes away looking stupid; it is always those over oppressive spectators and authorities that feel the need to bring out armed police forces to “control” the naked protestors that are the ones to look the fool.

Another great thing about naked protests is that they are almost always guaranteed to attract media attention. This is what all protestors want – and is the ultimate aim – to spread the word, gain support and make a difference. Newspapers and photographers follow naked protestors around wherever they go.

Here are two of the most powerful and well- known naked protests that are taking place the world over at present, in order to expose some of the world’s most worrying issues.

Femen

Femen is a protest organisation in the Ukraine, consisting of young women. Femen originally used naked protesting as a way of exposing the country’s problems with sex tourism and prostitution. Now, however, they regularly stage naked protests to combat general sexism throughout the country. The organisation uses the slogan and concept ‘bare breasts as weapons' to tackle critics head on and to make a bold stand against abuse, sexism and inequalities aimed at women. Rather different to the Vulnerability Vigil however, Femen uses naked breasts to show strength. Similarly though, their naked tactics portray solidarity and determination to fight for what they so strongly believe in. The protestors at Femen use irony to make their point against prostitution; they use sex appeal to gain attention (as opposed to cash), capitalising on their looks (they are often very attractive women) to maximise the message.

Femen is also well known for its high risk tactics. They use social networking sites to carefully – and often secretively – plan their next protest. On Facebook alone, they have over 33,000 followers so protests can often be on a huge scale, and are often planned without police involvement. Protests, however, are always friendly – this is the point. Women are polite to police officers and authorities, often smiling and waving for them.

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy

In contrast, however, is the protesting tactics of Egyptian art student, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy. She recently posted naked photos of herself on the internet via her blog in order to campaign for freedom of expression in Egypt and to campaign "against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy". Quite predictably, her tactics have been met with outrage from the Islamic community.

This could have dire consequences for Aliaa Magda Elmahdy; it is yet undecided whether and how she will be punished for her actions. She has made her point in terms of exposing and making a fool of the oppressive society she campaigns against. Her images – which were uploaded along with symbolic black bars over her genitals, mouth and eyes – were almost immediately circulated for the world to see. In this digital age, you no longer need newspapers or a courier service to broadcast photos to the world – just a few clicks and the photos went viral over the internet. She certainly achieved her mission of making her point heard, and no doubt the majority of people will agree with the powerful message she is conveying, and the freedom she is fighting for. However, she now faces the turmoil of falling victim to the system – another of its casualties – as her images have since been exploited due to being in such wide circulation.

Whatever the point, naked protests are a powerful way to convey a message – and that is what the Vulnerability Vigil is all about. We are all vulnerable, therefore we must all make a stand.

CFS: my reply to an email inquiry about suffering Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Hi Ms. Diamant,

A friend of mine saw your show at the Victoria Fringe and told me he learned you suffered
from chronic fatigue at some point. I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was
wondering if you could tell me what worked for your recovery from it, if that's the case.

D

Hi there

I haven't recovered from CFS, I just have a different way of viewing it and I only use that label
because it seems to help people understand. Not sure how hopeful I can sound since I am
down sick today, but here goes...

First of all, I see it as a healing process. I am working my way through what I will term "personal
karmic shit." Second, I believe some people are filters for what I will term "global karmic shit"
and I am one of them. So it's a healing process for myself and others through me. I also don't
really see it going away since I have been at it since the early 90s. Letting go of "fixing it" has
actually helped me. I believe many illnesses are actually how people express a reaction to the
atrocities and injustices of the world. But that's just me. I am no longer interested in the
medical model.

All the best, Tasha

A Response from a Colleague (September 2010)

Hi, Tasha:

I FINALLY got up the courage (isn’t that silly?) to go into your project. I understand why people cry. This project is wrenching—I think of Holocaust victims and those who are thought of as so much less than human, forced to strip to nakedness. So many human beings of worth and beauty who’ve been incarcerated and tortured by the soulless machinery of bureaucracy. And laid bare as part of the dehumanizing. How humiliated people are made to be. Utterly alone and helpless.

In fact, the human form is a creation of beauty and spirit. It needs the respect I can see your audience giving you. Those who would degrade and abuse that are the monsters, even as they celebrate their power over others.

You’re a woman with courage. Who knows who you will influence with this stab into the darkness of Big Brother.

Thanks for what you’re doing, Tasha. It’s jarring, it’s multi-layered; it’s poetic, it’s art and it’s necessary.


Ruth