Art511
Fitch Ball, photo credit: Olympia Dior

EAT BLOODY PUSSY

EAT BLOODY PUSSY, created and directed by Fitch Ball in character as “Blood Pussy,” is a queer feminist art project and zine with a live showcase that happened Saturday July 29, 2017 at Studio X in Bushwick. The evening length show featured juicy live performances and work in a variety of formats by Amanda Wallace, Ashley Jordan, Bailey Catherine Nolan, Charley Parden, Gwen Kehrig-Darton, Helen Gutowski, Kira Melville, Leticia Sampedro, Libby Mislan, Madelena Mak, Noel Sanchez, Peter Smith, Quenton Stuckey, Susannah Simpson, Victory Gardens and Willow Gibbons.

 

“Come Feast” was the catch phrase of a show organized in three movements – Earth, Body, Blood. EAT BLOODY PUSSY’s prominent themes included mourning of the loss of women’s blood magic and wise ways, the sterilization of menstruation, non-conforming bodies, illness and stigma, healing hegemonic “he-ness,” menstrual erotica and blood rituals for reconnecting to the earth. As a collective statement EAT BLOODY PUSSY, “impels all radical bodies and beings to create through their base places…”

 

Entering Studio X, on the third floor of a non-descript Bushwick loft building, I immediately caught sight of Kira Melville squatting on a small table with a homemade labia pie propped up at crotch level. “My Cuntry ‘Tis of Thee” was the name of this piece. In her dollar-bill print string bikini and ratty blonde wig, Melville was Sheela-na-gig 1 meets Miss America in a country where, sadly, most women know more about Kim Kardashian’s contouring “secrets” than their own genitalia. Melville’s pussy pie was oozing its dark red filling, which she scooped out handfulls of and ate gingerly. Nearby under a mound of soft grey gauze, my curious fingers stroked a mock vulva made of all organic materials. Elegant sheople in pink and red clothing milled about, with platters of vulva shaped cream cheese, fruit and bread making a nice spread on the table for visitors to snack on. Hairy armpits (and vaginas!) peeped out of lace onesies. A golden dildo was mounted on the wall.

 

Fitch Ball greeted me jubilantly with a pink bed sheet forming a halo around her head. She resembled a clamshell, a nun and a saint all at once. Stains of blood ran down from her mouth as she moved about, hugging and embracing her friends and admirers within the space of her billowing bed sheet frock. Her outfit in motion read like a queer slumber party or epic sex session.

 

Videos were screened in between performances as the live acts got underway. Ball’s infamous collaborator Susannah Simpson screened a series of “nature porns” of herself rolling around at the beach and in foliage that conjured, Agnes Denes Wheatfield and Marina Abramovic’s Balkan Erotic Epic. Simpson’s classic Hollywood bombshell looks had me thinking, what if Alfred Hitchcock had been eco-feminist? She set the unsuspecting audience on fire with a long bout of shrill screaming as if to act out the rape of the Mother Earth followed by a heartfelt speech about integrating her masculine side at the somatic level. During act three, she concluded her suite of performances by covering her body in (fake?) blood as she writhed sexually and declared “I’m disgusting” over and over as Fitch in clamshell habit, skipped around her blowing a bubble gun.

 

Charley Parden tag-teamed with Fitch as MC of the event, shape-shifting between queer freak and cosmic guru as he called for audience participation, moments of meditation and reflection. He also took polls, turns out 100% of the audience EATS BLOODY PUSSY.

 

With the midway screening of Quenton Stuckey’s Le Femme, we saw a new form enter the show’s shecosystem. In the artist’s elegant short, a Black male performs a mixture of modern dance with influence of street styles like Flexin’ in dim lighting. A collection of narrative voiceovers reflect on freedom, family, pain, black culture and the privileges and rituals of gender. “At my house you didn’t get a hug unless you were a baby. Ain’t nobody hugging nobody. You were getting hit,” rang out with a somber note that stuck with me as the show moved on.

 

Noel Sanchez performed “Lucent Reflection,” a spoken word performance with video about being HIV positive and still feeling “radiant and alive.” Kat Hunt screened a video called “How She Was Taught to Eat A Banana” – apparently very daintily, with mouth covered, as if the fruit itself or women in general, or both, were obscene. Acclaimed local poetess, Libby Mislan, performed eclectic dance poetry. Proclaiming “I heal these streets with my freak” and “the garden grows within me when I groove;” Mislan danced powerfully to her own prose and ended sweetly with the crowd singing along “Rainforest cool baby, rainforest cool…”

 

Helen Gutowski’s performance channeling St. Maria of Seville was a crowd pleaser. Gutowski rolled cigarettes as she told the story of Maria. Eventually she shoved her cigs in audience goers mouth’s and ripped off her pink kimono as she declared St. Maria of Seville a “Goddess” and unsung feminist heroine of Catholic Spain. An equally strong invocation of the archetypal feminine came through Bailey Nolan, who performed climactically towards the end as a huge red bird with absurdly long wings and a fabulous cardboard beak, in a piece called “Blood Hum.” According to Maria Gimbutas, lauded archeomythologist of mother worship, winged and beaked figures were some of the most reoccurring visual motifs of the prehistoric agrarian Matriarchy. I loved Nolan’s pizzazz and mused, “This… is real performance art.”

 

A little baby not quite able to walk on his own crawled over strangers legs and tapped on their backs, grabbing noses and earrings gently as the show’s bloody vaginas exploded all around him. He was my son. He was born out of my pussy at its most bloody. Which for me begs the question, where were all the mothers? And the crones? What happens when a woman ceases to bleed? The question most on my mind was this: Why is (Art World) feminism still the rebellious daughter of white male patriarchy and not the MOTHER of the world?

 

Fitch Ball’s closing performance “Bread and Blood” was visceral, sexy and bold. Her vision rang through clearly as she delivered this final piece. Recollections of disordered eating bled into Eucharist traditions celebrating a singular white male Father – the violence of patriarchy was palpable, but where was the blood? Asked Ball. Historically speaking, many cultures baked menstrual blood right into their breads and baked goods. Ritual bread represented the living body of the Goddess, the symbol of a healthy harvest and the fertility of the Mother Earth nourishing her children, the people of earth. Ball looked even more gorgeous as she ripped off the clamshell habit to reveal a head of messy, white blonde boy hair that perfectly matched her tighty whities… continuing to woo an audience that was under her spell.

 

At its ooey gooey best EAT BLOODY PUSSY was a community of friends coming together for a very sincere, playful, imaginative and sensuous use of art for healing. The show enforced the empowerment of gender and racial identities that had been made the casualties of white male patriarchy. Diva cups, free bleeding, menstrual acne, rape revenge. Get it. Eat it. Yell Loud and proud and look good doing it – is generally a good motto for today’s contemporary feminism. If this isn’t Goddess worship, I don’t know what is. Moving forward, I think we’d all like to see our art communities become more integrated and interconnected, more diverse, more intersectional and more conscious. And it goes without saying we’d all like to see more folks EAT BLOODY PUSSY.

 

 

 

 

  1. Sheela na gigs are figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva. They are architectural grotesques found on churches, castles and other buildings, particularly in Ireland and Great Britain.

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