Queering the Both of Us: The Subversive Potential of the Avatar

Georges Jacotey is a young Greek artist working primarily in new media and performance. Many of his artworks are viewable online, specifically on YouTube where he maintains a large archive. His channel ranges from high-resolution documentation of performance art in galleries to short clips of him experimenting with lo-fi webcam effects. This wide range of video aesthetics and content sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish what is experimentation with self-imaging and what is intentional artwork. Regardless of intent, Jacotey’s YouTube channel exhibits a spectrum of—or perhaps a multiplicity of—self-representation.

In the context of Web 2.0, the term avatar is usually affiliated with a digital cyberself. I would like to propose that this term may expand to encompass a more literal construction of the physical self —Jacotey’s video performances serving as an example of this potential. Jacotey’s online performance Son of a Patriarch (2013), for example, demonstrates the distinction between his two selves: Jacotey as artist and JacoteyV2, the artist’s constructed persona. I am interested in the consideration of an avatar as an Internet-mediated persona, apparent throughout Jacotey’s experimentation with online self-representation. More specifically, the artist harnesses webcam technology’s often-invisible conventions, specifically notions of ‘bedroom-culture,’ to ultimately subvert dominant gender identities.

In Son of a Patriarch Jacotey sports a large moustache, camouflage t-shirt and beige nylons. The video’s backdrop is a non-descript interior, but still carries an undertone of privacy. The artist first turns on the video camera, implying that no one else is present to do so. As a piano rendition of Beyoncé’s “Ego” (2008) begins, Jacotey stands up, adjusts his body posture, and transforms into his avatar: JacoteyV2. For the first portion of the video, JacoteyV2 loosely mimics the original choreography of the song’s music video, singing along to its lyrics while staring directly at the viewer. As the song ends, JacoteyV2 removes his camouflage shirt and instigates pornographic gestures with popsicles as props. Next, the avatar approaches the camera to adjust its angle, moving the lens toward the floor to show a white towel and small fan. The constant adjustment of the camera throughout the video suggests the presence a live feedback display, whereby JacoteyV2 may be watching themselves^[i] perform. JacoteyV2 then lies on the towel, continuing to play with the popsicles, while adopting various pin-up girl-style poses. “I Never Thought I’d See the Day” (1988) by Sade begins, and JacoteyV2 sensually sways along to the music while staring longingly at the viewer. As the song finishes, JacoteyV2 gets up, turns off the camera, and ends the performance.

While describing the creative process behind Son of a Patriarch, Jacotey claims the work attempts to “deconstruct masculine mannerisms” in order to examine “how hegemonic masculinity imposes itself through representations.”^[ii] Jacotey’s avatar, a hyper-stylized persona, performs sexualized feminine gestures to illustrate the irony and absurdity behind gendered cultural signifiers. Compiled of conflicting gendered behaviours and visual traits, the avatar I have named JacoteyV2 blurs the lines between expectations and representations of gender. JacoteyV2 can be viewed as both sexes, embodying conflicting feminine and masculine signifiers.

The aesthetic and narrative conventions of performing to a fixed camera, as seen in Son of a Patriarch, recall a long history of video performance art. Art theorist Rosalind Krauss’s 1967 discussion of early video art trends critically engages with the conventions of video works which acknowledge the camera’s eye. Krauss notes that mirroring via live feedback creates “…a displacement of the self which has the effect…of transforming the performer’s subjectivity into another, mirror, object.”^[iii] This statement translates well to contemporary webcam technologies, where the performer is also the spectator, a disembodiment of their own gaze projected onto themselves. Jacotey’s avatar acts as both mirror and agent, exposing dominant systems of binary gender representation through parody and mimicry. Because the body is central to video technology, Krauss perceived the medium as inherently narcissistic.^[iv] While Son of a Patriarch aligns with a contemporary webcam culture, which is often deemed narcissistic, Jacotey embodies conventional webcam gestures and behaviours toward a critical re-presentation.

Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has become a powerful self-publishing tool.^[v] Scholar Annette Lynch discusses notions of online self-objectification, as facilitated by the social media platform, wherein portrayals of self transform from private exploration into public display.^[vi] The illusion of privacy and comfort brought on by the personal computer and webcam may entice individuals to experiment liberally with video media, correspondingly generating new sub-genres and niches of online culture. For example, Jon Davies’ 2014 essay “Sissy Boys on YouTube” recognizes an empowering trend of young Queer boys performing pop culture ballads and dancing in their bedrooms. Among many potentials, webcam mirroring provides agency to its creator, but more importantly provides underrepresented groups with visibility on mainstream media platforms, like Davies’s case studies of Queer childhood.

Both Lynch and Davies are interested in how young men and women portray the self online, creating masks for themselves to experiment with personhood. Both authors also discuss the adoption of certain mannerisms and forms of dress which mimic the song and dance performances of pop culture icons. In these online videos, which are set in the comfort of the home and directly acknowledge the webcam, young performers not only create their own avatars, but reinforce the Internet sub-genre of bedroom culture. The intimacy of interior space becomes a powerful motif that helps to create an intensely personal experience between online subject and offline viewer. Through the similar use of interior space and pop culture references, minimal staging and edits, Jacotey’s homemade videos strategically harnesses this familiar experience. These purposeful aesthetic and narrative components seek to deconstruct Westernized gender stereotypes seen in pop culture, which are further represented in bedroom-culture genre videos.

Gender theorist Judith Butler’s discussion on gender performativity is relevant to Jacotey’s Son of a Patriarch. Butler famously argues that gender is “an identity tenuously constituted in time–an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts.”^[vii] Throughout Jacotey’s video, the performer uses an anatomically-male body to perform over-stylized and sexualized feminine gestures. In turn, the dissonance created by the gender reversal unmasks normalized gender binaries and makes them appear absurd. First moving from the energetic choreography of Beyoncé’s “Ego,” then excessively simulating fellatio, and finally performing to Sade’s melancholic anthem of rejection, JacoteyV2 embodies several facets of a one-dimensional and ridiculous, yet proliferated, female stereotype. Using his avatar to play with and try on various gendered codes frequently seen in pop culture representations, Jacotey challenges gender realities. Jacotey strategically enforces certain gendered protocols onto his avatar and Queers traditional representations of female and male.

Son of a Patriarch uses technical and rhetorical strategies of video performance and adopts the codes and conventions of bedroom culture toward a critique of the larger systems they operate in. Jacotey’s gender-fluid avatar performs the hyper-stylized and hyper-sexualized feminine stereotypes proliferated through Pop culture to demonstrate highlight their absurdity, and ultimately subvert them. The video is extremely accessible, both in execution and the format in which it is presented. On a final note, as a popular online platform YouTube allows the chance for anyone to stumble across its content. Without any prior knowledge of Jacoety’s artistic practice, how might the average viewer perceive the artist’s work? I like to imagine that JacoteyV2 could provide unsuspecting YouTube users their first steps towards critical engagement with mainstream representations of gender and sexuality.

 

Notes:

^[i] I use the gender-neutral pronoun “themselves” to further emphasize JacoteyV2’s gender-fluidity.

^[ii] “006.mp4 – Georges Jacotey, Son of a Patriarch,” YouTube video, 1:05, posted by netartnet.net, August 14, 2013. [youtube.com/watch?v=AM7tfCukb-w].

^[iii] Rosalind Krauss, “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,” October 1, 1976: 55.

^[iv] Ibid., 58-59.

^[v] Youtube’s slogan: “Broadcast Yourself” even hints at exhibitionism; Laura Fitzpatrick, “Brief History of YouTube,” Time, May 31, 2010.

^[vi] Lynch discusses the negative repercussions that can arise from the use of Youtube in private settings and the ease in which “private explorations of self” can become “public displaces of identity”; Lynch, Annette. Porn Chic: Exploring the Contours of Raunch Eroticism. New York: Berg Publishers, 2012: 147.

^[vii] Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40.4, 1988: 519.

Bibliography