I entered the darkened room in Ida Noyes Hall a few minutes after the performance had begun and was taken completely by surprise. As I took my seat I was immediately transfixed by the noises and visual effects of the Rubber Tit performance–it was almost as if I was watching some form of religious ritual, a spiritual performance of the self. Electronically modified jazz sprang from MASA’s saxophone and news clips flashed across the screen while the tit was noisily inflated in the foreground. Subsequently, the lights came on and the sensual experience was recentered on Tari Ito’s activities. Tari-san proceeded to construct the closeted confines surrounding the tit, slowly enveloping the closet (a wooden structure at the front of the stage) in a web of multicolored strings. With MASA’s music driving her forward, Tari-san proceeded to construct her own cage. The constrictions of the wooden closet and the multicolored strings, however, were not able to imprison the tit, and Tari soon freed it, inflating the somewhat lifeless rubber mass into an enormous tit. At this point the performance took on a playful quality, with MASA’s music gaining melodic consistency and Tari’s relation to the tit becoming more lively. The audience got involved as people laughed when the tit was pushed to the opposite side of the room and defended themselves when it threatened their own space. The performance came to a close with MASA playing her most consistently coherent music and Tari-san gyrating in place, staring transfixed at her rubber creation.
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April 12, 2007
The Rubber Tit Experience
remembering the performance
Since Tari san’s performance, I found that remembering and tracing the performance could bring some new ideas and feelings. Over a couple of days, I kept wondering how powerfully a message could be delivered through a form of art. The performance seemed powerful to me because its impact often comes back and brings a fresh inspiration.
The performance included the video footage on coming out. The video had a political implication, but at the same time, it merged with music, sound, light and shadow in the space, thereby being a part of the performance. In this context, flowing words like “coming out” and “workplace” reached me as more like a part of music and visual effect, rather than a talk with a specific agenda. I did not pay too much attention to the video at the moment, but now by recalling the performance in my memory, together with new information that the woman, Ms. Otsuji, was about to run for next national election, I grew curious to figure out the contents of her message. Am I receiving the message too slowly? If so, this could be because what I saw afterwards in the performance; when the “grownup” tit was freed from the cage and played by Tari san and then moved among the audience, Tari san and the audience both seemed to be embracing the interaction as individuals who were willing to participate to move the tit, perhaps for a moment without thinking too much about politics. Thus in the performance, two inseparable but different elements, political connotation of being a sexual minority and pleasure of expressing and sharing artistic self coexisted.
Immediately after the performance, I began thinking about what I perceived as my own sexual self, or some moments in the past that I had decided not to recall (or re-live) a while ago. When I heard about both Tari san and Masa san’s past experience as activists in class, a question vaguely began to shape: How can I relate my past experience to myself today, and eventually to society and politics? And this question is changing its shape constantly. I am also curious to know how differently other people were affected after the performance, and how they recall the event. Depending on the context, different scenes from the performance may appear and reappear, each time with different meanings attached to them. Tari san and Masa san’s performance was inspiring because of this “aftertaste,” together with many other things I am learning, making me variously question my own self and social/political expressions.
-Tomoko
Pleasure of being a lesbian
While watching Tari joyously toss the Rubber tit, I realized that I was inadvertently expecting something more sensational, which was also a kind of prejudice. In the “Self-Portrait” performance, which we watched in DVD in the class, Tari seemed to have been protesting in a more sensational way when she painfully tore off her body skin one by one, repeatedly asking who she was. In the “Rubber Tit” performance, Tari no longer tried to ensure the audience that she is a lesbian. Rather, she looked like playing with the Rubber tit for the most part of the performance. Compared to other objects she used before such as abnormally swollen body parts or the rubber vagina attached to the floor to be torn, the Rubber tit as a material was more comforting. Its orange color was warm and tender and its flexibility felt embracing. Tari buried herself in the soft lump of rubber or rode over it, giving herself to the sway of the Rubber. When she rolled it over the audiences, as if it were a ball, the audience shared the pleasure of touching it and laughed. I could see in this performance a matured reflection upon what comes along after the painful coming out. That was a “pleasure” of being a lesbian.
Still, I also had a small question about using a body part as a symbol of woman. If a heterosexual male performer used the same object, the Rubber tit, he must have been questioned about the essentialization of femininity into a particular body part. Of course, I know that an object can produce different meaning in a different context. Then how could we interpret using this one female body part visualizing femininity in this performance?
-hyunsuk
