“There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.” (Lorde 53)

What would it mean to exploit the thing that has exploited me?

In any attempt to create, I feel forced to look critically at myself as I (and art object) unfold. In this way, it becomes imminently important for me to position myself as a white woman effectively challenging myself and the West as authoritative subjects of feminist and anthropological knowledge. I begin questioning the complexities of what it means to exist, operate, and “claim objectivity” as a creator, documenter, or ethnographer under the trajectory of Eurocentric frameworks which have been already put in place for me. What would it mean to disrupt these bottomless “master discourses”? What would it mean to create something in a state of becoming or fragmentation? What would it mean to exploit the thing that has exploited me?

My idea involves careful consideration of the possible linkings between “post-feminism” and “post-modernism”. By defining these two terms as not merely what comes after feminism or modernism, but pointing towards their most nascent stages, it becomes highly valuable to examine them within the context of 3D printing. Because everything we make, whether we want it to be understood as art or not, is inherently political, the ideas of “post-feminism” and “post-modernism” become my framework for understanding both my positionality and the tools, myths, and gestures involved in 3D creation.

Additionally, the exploration of truth//fact will be a guiding force within my process. By understanding that the accumulation of fact does not equate to the arrival at any certain “truth”, I question the objectivity of any notion when one realizes the aberrations carried out in the “name of truth”. Since a large part of the work that we do in this class is documentation, I feel that it is important for me to challenge the “facts” in a documentary practice. Are fact and truth neither relative nor absolute? What can truly be considered “scientific” or “objective”, when more often than not a number of codes are unconsciously used to disfigure and alter our individual understanding of how things look and feel? Why does it become more and more difficult for us not to confuse fact with truth each time we engage in a documentary practice?

It is hard for me to not feel overwhelmed. Because there are so many artistic, political, and ethical concerns connected to 3D printing, it is difficult for me to settle with one singular image or idea. It is difficult for me to get past the feeling that absolutely nothing is worth me 3D printing at all. As I find myself face to face with the hyper-reality of 3D printed pizzas, unborn fetuses, and working guns, I ask myself what separates a necessary creation from an unnecessary one? Who gets to decide what is necessary or not? This is where I try my best to take these broader terms and conditions (post-feminism//post-modernism//truth//fact) and turn them into specificities.

Specifically, what feels most vital in my attempt to create is the relationship between myself and the machine. Through well-considered poetic analysis of myself and the object I create I hope to disrupt something, to exploit the machine. This is where I return to my idea of creating something in a state of becoming and fragmentation. From Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Framer Framed, I quote, “Fragmentation is here a useful term because it always points to one’s limits. Since the self, like the work you produce, is not so much a core as a process, one finds oneself, in the context of cultural hybridity, always pushing one’s questioning of oneself to the limit of what one is and what one is not.” (Trinh 156)

This limit described by Trinh T. Minh-ha is particularly important because it not only points to the limits of the machine and its inevitable failure, but also the limits of myself, my physical body, and its failure to perform (at times) the way that it is “supposed to”. By further exploring my physical body’s limits and “failure to perform” from a feminist perspective, it becomes clear the many ways in which our capitalist-imperialist-heteronormative-patriarchal society has turned my body (simultaneously) into both a weapon and an object to (simultaneously) either be regulated or possessed. So what would it mean to visually represent this horror? What would it mean to compare my body’s limitations to the limitations of the makerbot? How can I exploit this?

I will be 3D printing dildos. With access to a machine that can literally materialize violence including ammunition, working guns, drones, and bombs, I will exploit the machine by creating objects that are used for pleasure. However, the dildos that I create will not appear to be functional. Because our society has such an obtrusive definition of what female pleasure looks like, and that dildos must appear to be phallic, I will design three that not only completely disrupt that vision but are also crafted specifically to the wants and needs of my three housemates.

What is the function of female pleasure? How is my definition of female pleasure different from yours?

Works Cited:

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing, 1984. Print.

Trinh, T. Minh-Ha. Framer Framed. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print.