It would be easy, I am sure, to dismiss this project as utter blasphemy and obscenity. I myself may have indeed called it as such growing up in the shadow of Roman Catholicism. It has become clear to me however, that one cannot truthfully judge what that means without going into, through, and all-around it - without transgressing into blasphemy and obscenity. This installation speaks about that transgression and what I found on the other side. A journey wherein I am just beginning to understand the nature and meaning of my life.

sinsexsalvation came into existence because I wanted to explore what I thought were the shockingly plain overlaps between two worlds I see as intrinsically connected: Catholicism and Sadomasochism. Further, having been raised Catholic and then rejected from the church in college when I discovered my sexuality, I was ready to tackle the demons of Catholicism that had haunted me for so many years. I had finally been to the other side of Catholicism and made some monumental realizations about not only what it meant to me and why I was attracted to it, but most importantly, what I saw it meant to so many others.

sinsexsalvation is a multimedia installation that embodies and finds the existence of overt masochism in the Roman Catholic church and finds that the value and meaning of masochism in both the sadomasochistic and Catholic realms are extensively the same. This juxtaposition is achieved by the presentation of three characters in the video portion of the installation who metaphorically embody the Holy Trinity: father, son, and holy spirit. The metaphor of the Trinity is used to subvert what it religiously represents - father, son, holy spirit - into a duality between that and the sadomasochistic equivalent of such: mistress, slave, and the cross-over, transcendent figure of St. Theresa of Avila.

sinsexsalvation serves to critique the ways in which the Roman Catholic church denies physical pleasures of the body, while at the same time not only does its imagery bombards us with those pleasures, but it actually PROVIDES that pleasure in a masochistic context. It is an exploration on the Roman Catholic church's denial of sexuality and pleasure as a whole. Further, sinsexsalvation rejects the patriarchal stance of the Roman Catholic church and of the society that accepts this patriarchy by portraying the Trinity as a woman.

Catholicism instills in its tenants a propensity for receiving pain and for being rewarded; for transcendence, through pain, to ecstasy. The same transcendence felt by Catholics in the rituals of the church (penitence, contrition, submission, and in extreme cases, flagellation) is extensively equal to the transcendence felt by persons involved in the world of sadomasochism. This transcendence is not an exclusively religious experience; it is at once ecstatic -- be it through religious ritual or erotic ritual. Yet in the Roman Catholic church they are made to seem so far apart. The desire to do penance, or to be punished, can be seen as a means of finding sexual satisfaction, spiritual satisfaction, or both. Either way there is pleasure in it.

sinsexsalvation also addresses issues of ritual and theater as experienced both in the Roman Catholic church and in sadomasochism. Through personal research both in literature and through personal experience I've seen evidence that many persons rejected by Catholicism turn to sadomasochism to fulfill their Catholic instilled desire for ritualistic suffering, submission, and reward. sinsexsalvation imposes these rituals by forcing the viewer to kneel in front of a cross that encloses three channels of video, and look through a small peephole at the center of the cross. The kneeling person, in this way, becomes both the viewed (by others in the room), and a voyeur in that they are peeping in looking at something that the rest of the room cannot see.

Ambient audio fills the area the installation occupies creating an experience vaguely indicative of the Roman Catholic church -- yet as the viewers listen, it becomes apparent that there is something twisted and deviant about it. Upon first encountering the installation and looking at the structure one may believe the cross a genuinely religious object to which they can submit to, confess or pray, and from which they can receive their penance and peace of mind. However, upon kneeling, peeping and viewing the contents, and listening to the audio, this desire to be good' gets transmuted into the person feeling ultimately guilty' (in the Catholic sense) in that they have piously knelt and participated in a ritual which they thought was Catholic -- rightly it should be thought Catholic because it is, but it is also sadomasochistic in the submission alone. What the kneeling person receives possibly is not what they were looking for.

This project is thoroughly informed by my readings on the history of pornography, sexuality and feminism (especially those of Pat Califia, Carol Queen and Annie Sprinkle) which affirm women as sexual creatures. It is especially informed by the texts on ecstasy, death, and religion by the late French theorist and author, Georges Bataille. sinsexsalvation is, however, predominantly about my personal experience dealing with and rejecting the Roman Catholic church as a queer and a pervert, and about how I have dealt with this rejection.

1.2 sinsexsalvation Description

The installation space of sinsexsalvation attempts to achieve an experience of theater that overlaps within the rituals of Roman Catholicism and sadomasochism. Upon entering, many implements are encountered that make the space truly resonant of the Catholic and sadomasochistic rituals to which they refer. (See Fig. 1)

Figure 1. Detail from sinsexsalvation

Figure 3. Installation view of sinsexsalvation from prayer candle altar and paschal candle in distance

Officially sanctioned Catholic Incense is also used in the space bringing yet another sense into use. Any person who has ever been to mass in a Catholic church will recognize this smell. The last touch is the distribution of holy cards at the installation with ‘sinsexsalvation’ stamped on the back as a sort of gift or invitation to the installation. Holy cards traditionally have a prayer to the particular saint that is on it. In this case...the only word on the card is the stamp, perhaps making the viewer wonder -- ‘Am I supposed to pray in the name of sinsexsalvation?’ The significance of the prayer card is covered further in chapter four.

2.4 Santa Clara University

I attended college at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit institution in the San Francisco bay area of California. It was here where I truly started realizing my artistic potential and started taking studio art classes as well as continuing with my studies of music. When I switched from pre-medicine to art and music after my 2nd year of college, I felt as though I had finally figured out what in the world I was supposed to be doing with my life. I often locked myself in my dorm room on Friday and Saturday nights (trying to avoid all the fraternity parties) and obsessively painted, drew, sculpted, and played my synthesizer. My sophomore year I painted my dorm room walls with a collage of bodies, musical and artistic influences, and quotes to go along with it all. The art department at Santa Clara was very small and personalized, which seemed to suit me perfectly. I had finally found my artistic voice.

All undergraduate students at Santa Clara were required to take three religion courses to graduate; and it was in my third class during my fifth year at SCU that I had an experience that has profoundly influenced my art. The class was called Jesuit Perspectives and each week a different Jesuit came to class to talk about his different ways of relating to God through his field of study. One night, a man named Fr. Paul Crowley S.J. came and talked to us about his gay brother dying eight months earlier to AIDS. It was one of the first times since I had come out as queer on campus and rejected Catholicism as irreconcilable with my sexuality two years earlier that I felt someone was on my side and could see through all the outdated church doctrine. When I came out I was one of two out queer women on a campus of four thousand(the other was my girlfriend). I lost most of my friends and was tormented by stereotypically minded individuals who thought I was ‘disgusting’. People asked my friends whom I shared a house with why they didn’t kick me out, obscenities were scrawled on men’s bathroom walls about my sexual prowess, and parents of my close friends suddenly told their daughters that I wasn’t allowed on trips with them because I might make people feel ‘uncomfortable’. I had lost all confidence and respect for Catholicism until my encounter with Fr. Crowley. The following is an excerpt of a letter that I wrote to Fr. Crowley after the class:

It is through such testimony like what you gave us tonight that people can begin to understand what gay people are every bit as normal as everyone else. We love, we care for each other, we have long lasting relationships, and slowly--through such wonderful people as yourself, we can also learn that God does not despise us. It is difficult for me to let down my walls that I have built up to protect myself and let God in. I guess I especially feel alone on the cross when I see people with banners that say ‘god hates fags’ etc. It is a rather difficult thing at times to find faith amongst all of the hatred in our country. It is especially difficult trying to be spiritual while people are all along telling you that you aren’t--that you are unnatural and a abomination. Slowly though, I am learning my place in this world. Two times this quarter the Isaiah 43: 1-4 verse has come up in class. The verse has helped me realize some things about myself; most important that God doesn’t despise me.

I cannot even start to express to you what this class has meant to me. It has totally changed my outlook on the Jesuits and their beliefs. It has given me strength and hope when all I could see was hopelessness. I think maybe you saved me tonight.

Through all my experiences it is my belief that I have come out of all of this an extremely spiritual, compassionate, caring and loving person. I have become more in touch with not only my feelings and emotions, but especially others. Best of all I have found a way to channel all of this feeling and emotion through my art and music. This is why your talk touched me so tonight. This class is the most moving class I have been to in my 5 years here at Santa Clara...

After I wrote the letter to Fr. Crowley, I received a response from him dated 3.10.95:

Dear Shannon,

Peace! I was so touched by your letter, and thank you for it from my heart. Sometimes we have little sense of what we are about to say or what its effect might be. That was the case for me this week in your class with Fr. Wright. I myself was moved that I was able to convey these things, and am more and more convinced that this is what we must do to make the world a happier place. Your letter was therefore very consoling and confirming for me.

Shannon, you are right that I understand very well what you are going through, and I am so pained that you are suffering such trial and rejection. On the other hand, I am glad that you are finding ways of seeing your own inherent goodness, and that with quiet courage, you are affirming that goodness in yourself. Yes, you are loved, and precious in the sight of God, and you must never cease believing that.

I am always here.

Warmly, Fr. Paul Crowley, SJ.

As my skills developed over time I started to develop an aesthetic that dealt with pain, suffering, and the body. At first I only dealt with images such as the crucifixion or with representations of my feelings and the body through skulls or other bodily imagery. Slowly though, as I began to question the church, I started developing more critical pieces. What follows are brief descriptions of projects in which some of the ideas expressed in sinsexsalvation originate.

crucifix chair

crucifix chair (1995: mixed media) is a piece that came directly out of the Jesuit Perspectives class I had that year. I was obsessed with myself as a crucified person, unable to see or feel God because I was on the cross (suffering the passion, Jesus thought that God had abandoned him). I constructed a chair that looked like a crucifix so that when I sat on it, I became the crucified figure -- abandoned by God. I also started incorporating text into my work, which would become a common current in my later electronic works.

In 1995, I started working on an IBM machine with a graphics program called Lumina 16. Intrigued at the ease that I could incorporate text into my work, I started adding my thoughts into my graphic work. Angry, hurt, confused, and mad...I tried to convey all these feelings through the text on my work. Some examples of the text used:

Where Are all the Angels Now? (Figure 5.)

Pain

What do we believe?...nothing.

I feel strangled, but I cut myself free and live anyway.

Assumptions and Associations is a video about my experience of coming out as queer on a Jesuit campus in 1992. The story is told through a paper that my roommate, Amy, wrote about how she was trying to deal with my sexuality. This video is, as of today, still in post-production.

Although primitive, it is clear that my explorations of my sexuality, the body, and of Catholicism were firmly rooted in my undergraduate years no matter which medium I chose to express those ideas in. My early work is an attempt to understand how I could fit into the world which I craved to be part of, but had been rejected from. At that time I had no idea that I had been so influenced by my surroundings and had many issues to work out before I could really take a closer look at relevant issues such as in sinsexsalvation. I also was greatly encouraged by my new found electronic tools, meager though they were, and the abilities I now had to very easily incorporate text.

...the poetry of transgression is also knowledge. He who transgresses not only breaks a rule. He goes somewhere that the other are not, and he know something that others don’t know.

Susan Sontag- The Pornographic Imagination

Figure 6. Hieronymus Bosch Devil Roasting his Victim on a Spit Detail from The Last Judgement.

Egon Schiele

Andres Serrano is one of the few artists today who has openly tackled the issues of eroticism, the body, and religion. Especially in Serrano’s early photographs such as Piss Christ, Heaven and Hell , and Crucifixion , the erotic qualities are undeniably exhilarating. One of the most interesting and provocative aspects in his work is the use of bodily fluids as a metaphor for the intersections between the corporeal erotic self, and the ethereal religious self. Serrano was severely attacked for Piss Christ which was described as "Jesus on the cross in a golden haze through a smattering of minute bubbles against a dark, blood-colored background. By slight twisting and considerable enlargement, the image takes on a monumental appearance and the viewer would never guess that a small plastic crucifix was used." Serrano described the photograph as "attacking the debasement of religious symbolism in a commercial world." Despite his and the art worlds defending of Piss Christ, a congressional frenzy (especially by Senator Jesse Helms who stated "Serrano is not an artist. He is a jerk.") ensued that ultimately led to the end of the National Endowment for the Arts.

sinsexsalvation, like Piss Christ plays with the notions of the erotic and religious in similar ways. Subtle hints lead to the core of the piece: looking at the installation view of sinsexsalvation one may, like Serranos’ Piss Christ, mistake the intentions for reverence.

Gobers’ most recent piece, Untitled, 1997 incorporates the Virgin Mary impaled by a culvert pipe on a sewer grate with water running underneath. I did not discover this piece until after sinsexsalvation was almost completed, however the parallels between Gobers’ work and my own are many. He, also, was raised Catholic and rejected it when he realized he was gay. Much of his body of work incorporates dismembered body parts and references to Catholicism as well as work toward awareness of the AIDS pandemic.

As a child, I would beg my mother to take me to the comic book store to look for old Boris Karloff comic books. Stories like For Whom the Bell Tolls were my normal afternoon leisure reading. Indeed from a very early age I enjoyed reading about the macabre and the freakish. I also enjoyed watching gothic horror movies. The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Pit and the Pendulum are two movies which come to mind which thoroughly informed my aesthetic for gothic lighting, drama, and also dealt with issues of the body, the macabre, the freak, and the torture chamber.

The inspiration for gothic genre goes back to gothic romanticism; the idea of dehumanization caused by the industrial revolution. The archetype for this is Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. The monster as a metaphor for relationships between youth and the people and forces that shape them and the movie symbolizing the warnings about new technologies running amok; an industrial and scientific revolution out of control.

Gothic genre in the 80’s and 90’s incorporated sadomasochistic imagery and themes in both its fashion and music when the movement was slowing and fetish clubs like Torture Garden started playing to the gothic-industrial crowd.

The crowd at Torture Garden are the most dressed-up, upfront, cutting edge fetishmeisters you’ll see. There are people walking around the club in outfits that have obviously been made especially for that one night. The love of dressing up that was as much an attraction of the early Goth clubs as it is of the current gay/drag scene finds a whole new Garden to play in at Torture Garden.

This is where the 90’s version of gothic stemmed from. It is a mix of gothic, industrial, fetish, body art, cyberpunk, and S/M. There is a romanticism present in sinsexsalvation that comes partially from this influence - a romanticism about pain, torture, and decadence.

There is no doubt that the writings and work of Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle and Pat Califia have had a profound affect on sinsexsalvation. These three women break the boundaries of the traditional male-dominated sexual woman and affirm a platform of proclaiming pleasure for themselves. This transformation from the male gaze to female sexual empowerment is a important accomplishment and certainly important for the success of sinsexsalvation.

Queen (whom I had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks back) is a pro-porn, pro-sex worker, sexologist who’s essays on sexuality and specifically sex as art were especially influential. Queen speaks about the effect that traditional feminism has had on our sexuality:

The strain of feminism that cultured my self-doubts in a petri dish of sex-negativity has proved itself anachronistic and prudish. At best - when I’m feeling charitable - this feminism is simply ignorant of much of human life’s sexual possibility. It has made the mistake of overestimating its area of expertise, assuming that because it does a good job of cultural and political analysis of gender, economics, and power, it can proceed to analyze everything, including sex. Perhaps one day this analysis will have important ramifications on gender relations and sexual practice (I shudder at the latter thought, but then, discussing sex and mainstream feminism always leaves me feeling oddly jaded.)

Sprinkle is a pioneer of performance art in works such as public cervix announcement , where she would invite people to individually come up and peek into her vagina through a speculum to look at her cervix. She also published a deck of cards titled Post-Modern Pinups which profiled a pioneer woman in the sex world on each card. Her frankness about her sexuality and her transformation from sex-worker to sex-worker/performance artist is a total subversion of the male gaze. She has turned degradation into empowerment.

Califia is a sharp critic of repressive American attitudes towards sexuality and the feminist anti-pornography movement. Her boundary breaking essays are rich and extraordinarily pertinent in a society that considers S/M a deviant lifestyle. Califia writes:

The issue of pain is probably as difficult for non S/M people to understand as polarized roles are. We tend to associate pain with illness or self destruction...pain is a subjective experience. Depending on the context, a certain sensation may frighten you, make you angry, urge you on, or get you hot. In many situations, people choose to endure pain or discomfort if the goal for which they are striving makes it worthwhile. Long-distance runners are not generally thought of as perverts, nor is Mother Theresa. The fact that our society disapproves of masochism while it lauds stressful athletic activity and religious martyrdom is an interesting demonstration of how sex has been made a "special case." We seem incapable of using the same reasoning and compassion we apply to non-sexual issues to formulate our positions on sexual issues.

It is this very paradox between sexual and religious pain Califia speaks about that sinsexsalvation is deeply involved in exploring and exposing.

If any one person is responsible for influencing how I look at gender, it is most definitely Jeanette Winterson. Her novels Written on the Body and Art and Lies both include genderless characters that I have patterned much of my thinking about being a queer woman on and her book of essays Art [Objects], deconstructs Wolffs’ Orlando , talks about art, and speaks about the semiotics of sex.

If Queer culture is now working against assumptions of identity as sexuality, art gets there first, by implicitly or explicitly creating emotion around the forbidden. Some of the early feminist arguments surrounding the wrongfulness of men painting provocative female nudes seem to me to have overlooked the possibility or the fact of another female as the viewer. Why should she identify with the nude? What deep taboos make her unable to desire the nude?

Opera, before and after the nineteenth century, but not during, enjoyed serious games of sexual ambiguity, and opera fans will know the delicious and disturbing pleasure of watching a woman disguised as a man and hearing her woo another woman with a voice unmistakably female. Our opera ancestors knew the now forbidden pleasure of listening to a man sing as a women; in his diary, Casanova writes of the fascination and desire felt for these compromising creatures by otherwise heterosexual men. Music is androgynously sexy and with the same sensuous determination penetrates male and female alike. Unless of course one resists it, and how much sex-resistance goes on under the lie of ‘I don’t like opera.’?

Her books have greatly influenced how I think about sexuality and especially had influence in my choice of a bisexual woman to play the parts of God and Jesus in sinsexsalvation.

sinsexsalvation too strives for this transformation from male to female in my choice of a woman to play the characters of God and Jesus. Potter’s style of filmmaking has undoubtedly influenced how I choose to shoot the video portion of sinsexsalvation. From Potter I have used her style of tight, static shots used to imbue a contemplative and meditative mood in the St. Theresa and God the Father characters in sinsexsalvation.

Early on in my life, I was exposed to classical music. My exposure came from piano lessons, trips to the theater in Seattle, and through my mother constantly playing it at our home. I also always loved listening to the pipe organ at church and this sound would later repeatedly show up in my compositions. The exposure to classical music continued well into college as I became a music minor at Santa Clara university and I began to appreciate and understand the historical contexts influencing such genres as Gregorian chant and plainsong.

During my teen years, I started to develop a taste for British punk/synth bands like Bauhaus, The Church, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, The Smiths, and Soft Cell. Exposure to these bands peaked my interest in synthesizers and drum machines and I began experimenting with these instruments.

Perhaps one of the most influential bands I discovered later on while in college was what I termed a modern Gregorian chant band: Dead Can Dance (DCD). DCD has had a profound influence on my textural tastes and formulas in my compositions. I continued to foster my tastes for underground music and I am intimately involved with the gothic/industrial/techo-gothic music scene.

The Gothic-industrial genre is a direct descendant of the punk bands of the 70s and 80s. Rejection from society, pain, and emotional torture are common themes in this music...and they are themes which I seem continually drawn to in both my life and my work. The movement in the late 80’s and 90’s has embraced electronic instruments as it’s new mode of expression and sampling is widely used as part of it’s formula. Some of the bands I currently find interesting are: Delirium, The Cranes, Apoptygma Bezerk, and Lycia. These bands all use heavy distortion and sampling in their work as well as a commentary on religion. One specific example in Apoptygma Bezerk:

For me it is very important to see Christ not as this mythical Santa Claus type figure, but rather a communistic, anarchic person who walked around 2000 years ago...a homeless guy who was basically ridiculed and crucified by the leaders of his time. The things that he taught and the message that he preached are even by today’s standards extremely radical.

I find these bands both intellectually stimulating, inspiring, and truly experimental in their musical attributes and have aspired to, in sinsexsalvation, have a similar approach in the use of heavily distorted chords and processed samples combined with a commentary on issues close to me.

sinsexsalvation as such also attempts to question the Catholic churches hypocrisy and history as such through portrayal of the transgression between two types of submission: sexual and spiritual. It came to be partially because I had finally been exposed to electronic mediums in which I could combine my visual and audio ideas into one project.

sinsexsalvation, unlike its predecessor projects crucifix chair, and prints such as Where Are all the Angels Now?, speaks about pain and hypocrisy in the Catholic church in a more critical way rather than angrily. This is an important step in my development as an artist.

Man’s time is divided into profane time and sacred time, profane time being ordinary time, the time of work and of respect for the taboos, and sacred time being that of celebrations, the time of transgressing the taboos.

Georges Bataille - Eroticism

Traditional feminists (such as Andrea Dworkin) have totally condemned sadomasochism and generally have no understanding as to why a woman would ever want to engage in such activities. Many feminists believe that sadomasochism is the epitome of misogyny, sexism, and violence. This is a monumental misunderstanding propagated by the American taboo of not being able to talk about sex.

First, and since there is such confusion due to lack of information, lets have some background on what specifically sadomasochism is defined as today.

Sadomasochism is the collective term for the activities enjoyed by sadists and masochists. Further, sadomasochism is any activity involving power exchange during an erotic scene between consenting adults. This includes bondage and discipline, love bondage, dominance and submission, English culture, corporal punishment, erotic restraint, humiliation, and sexual control.

The word sadist is named after Marquis de Sade who lived from 1740-1814 and became famous for his debauchery and torture of lovers. He wrote many books of which Justine is his most famous. He spent 30 years in prison and narrowly escaped the guillotine. Modern day sadism has nothing in common with de Sade (a common point of confusion), but the term has stuck anyhow.

Masochism is derived from the Austrian writer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch who was born in 1835. He wrote the famous story of Venus in Furs , which detailed encounters concerning himself and his wife, Wanda, and enjoyed fantasy and domination in his sexual palette. Thus - the term masochist comes from Mr. Masoch.

The word sadomasochism has been debased by mass media, clinical psychology, and the anti-pornography movement in the same ways that homosexuality have been - sexual prejudice knows no boundaries. Due to the fact that no information is available about sex in general in the United States, it is mythologized and many don’t even know that it exists...so how could they even fathom trying it?

Because sadomasochism is usually portrayed as a violent, dangerous activity, most people do not think there is a great deal of difference between a rapist and a bondage enthusiast. But sadomasochism is not a form of sexual assault. It is a consentual activity that involves polarized roles and intense sensations. An S/M scene is always preceded by a negotiation in which the top and bottom decide whether or not they will play, what activities are likely to occur, what activities while not occur, and about how long the scene will last. The bottom is usually given a safe word or code action she can use to stop the scene. This safe word allows the bottom to fantasize that the scene is not consensual and to protest verbally or resist physically without halting stimulation.

Traditional feminism also finds the roles in S/M oppressive. They "accuse sadomasochism of being fascistic because of the symbolism employed to create an S/M ambiance. " While it is true an S/M scene can be played out including a doctor and nurse, a guard and prisoner, a cop and suspect, a Nazi and Jew, priest and penitent, etc. This does not necessarily mean that because one enjoys the regalia of a particular group that they are that which they pretend to be.

S/M is more a parody of the hidden sexual nature of fascism than it is a worship of or acquiescence to it. How many real Nazis, cops, priests, or teachers would be involved in a kinky sexual scene? It is also a mistake to assume that the historical oppressor is always the top in an S/M encounter....the prisoner may have turned the tables on the cop.

S/M searches for ways to eroticise forbidden feelings and actions. It is the ultimate in non-reproductive sex. Some hope it will be the future of sex. First, though, we must rid American society of assumptions about S/M.

...but there is another assumption--that we must enjoy being oppressed and mistreated. We like to wear uniforms? Then we must get off on having cops bust up our bars. We like to play with whips and nipple clamps and hot wax? Then it must turn us on when gangs of kids hunt us down, harass and beat us. We’re not really human. We’re just a bunch of leather jackets and spike heels, a bunch of post office boxes at the ends of sex ads.

We make you uncomfortable partly because we’re not so different. I’d like to know when you’re going to quit blaming us, the victims of sexual repression, of the oppression of women. I’d like to know when you’re going to quit objectifying us.

sinsexsalvation positions itself in this realm of radical sexology. It is a feminist piece in that it defies the patriarchy of the Catholic church and of American society. It strengthens sadomasochistic notions about sex in its use of sadomasochistic ritual within its’ milieu. It transmutes the male identified gaze characteristic of the peep-show by portraying male identified characters as women, whom are in control and giving consentual sexual pleasure to other women.

Throughout Catholicism there is a long history of transcendence to religious ecstasy, through pain. The medieval flagellants of Camaldoli and Fonte Avena marched in procession from town to town in the 11th century. At each town they would march to the church and in front of it perform a penitential ceremony - chanting and prostrating themselves in contrition. The ritual then would end in a severe flagellation of all participants, sometimes numbering in the thousands. All participants had to swear obedience to the master of the group...an agreement not unlike the modern masochistic contract. (See Appendix C)

There is also a documented case of two nuns who participated in what is termed the ‘Friday discipline’, which entailed a private self-flagellation. The nuns felt shamefully that in their quest for penance and to feel closer to the passion of Christ, they described what were pleasurable feelings from their flagellation and a secret shameful anticipation of Friday nights. The problem lies in the assumed mutual exclusiveness between religion and eroticism.

Sex, and the body as an actual physical presence capable of erotic sensation, are two things that the Catholic church has been in denial about since its condemnation of portraying the physical in anything but scenes of death and hell in the middle ages. The fact is that eroticism would not exist without religion which singles out certain acts as prohibited, guilty ones. In other words, if nothing is prohibited, then there is nothing to transgress. The prohibition determines the value of the act. When we transgress the prohibition, we have participated in the divine feast. The Latin root of the word divine means to deny the law of reason. We try and associate religion with law and reason, but:

If we confine ourselves to what grounds religions as a whole, we are forced to reject this notion. Religion is doubtlessly, even in essence, subversive: it turns away from the observance of laws. At least, what it demands is excess, sacrifice, and the feast which culminates in ecstasy.

Christian religion, specifically Catholicism, has completely condemned eroticism even though it has , through this very prohibition, created it. Without the counterbalance of the respect for forbidden objects of desire, there would be no eroticism. Christianity has, through it’s prohibition, created the seduction in eroticism that it wishes to prohibit. It wasn’t until Christianity rejected eroticism (to in turn reject it’s pagan competition) that it lost it’s essential sacred character and became unclean. Before Christianity, eroticism was celebrated as sacred.

This rejection of eroticism and sexuality stems back to the history of Judeo-Christianity itself, back to the Goddess worshipping religions (Christianity misnamed them fertility cults) which embraced sex as holy and sexual initiation and instruction was performed in rituals and in public . In the Tantric temples of India "worshipers came to circle the priestess and priest, embodiments of Shakti and Shiva, as the fucked - and this was holy!" When these religions came under siege by Judeo-Christianity, the temples in which these religious rituals took place came under attack.

In fact, every symbol in Genesis, from the serpent to the apple was sacred to the Goddess. Genesis is the allegory for the struggle between two competing religions for dominance in the ancient world. The stamping out of sex and sexuality in Christianity makes sense to us in this context. Sex lead to worship of the Goddess, and this could not be allowed, ergo, sex was dangerous.

Christianity has set out to murder Eros, but in this it has effectively murdered its followers. Perhaps Carol Queen says it best:

Eros did not die of poisoning and will not - the most life affirming of all human drives cannot die. But every child made to fell ashamed of her own impulses, every adult whose sexual practices are still criminalized, every couple who can’t talk about sex and desire, everyone who is given the green light to hate those who are sexually different from themselves have been poisoned. They are all victims of that ancient religious war, which, in the sexual arena, has never reached a state of truce.

The hypocrisy of Christianity and especially of Catholicism is that our culture uses sex to sell everything, from alcoholic beverages to soap and this is allowed - yet promoting safe, consentual sexual activity and fantasy like that which happens in the sadomasochistic community is criminal.

Masochism is an attitude which moves toward a dedication to suffering. An attitude which recognizes value and meaning in that suffering. In other words, as a Catholic for example, one is dedicated to suffer through life (by original sin alone) knowing that through suffering they can receive something in return - for example it could be as lofty as promise of heaven and salvation or just a temporary lifting of guilt from the person. In Catholicism, to even think of a prohibited act is just as bad as actually doing it - and the person must confess and serve penance or risk ‘hell’. In this way, that is though having a dedication to suffering, knowing that there is reward for that suffering, Catholics are bred from baptism to be submissive and masochistic to God and church. They are taught to worship martyrs who for the love and grace of God tortured themselves. St. Therese of Lisieux (1873 - 1897) who understood suffering as integral to her piety, even offered herself as "a holocaust victim to the merciful love of God." and emulated the late medieval practice of assimilation to Christ through self-sacrifice, humility, and forbearance of all suffering. St. Rita of Cascia (1377 - 1447) was an Italian stigmatic who practiced a very painful mortification of the flesh. She emphatically wanted to participate in the passion of Christ:

On Good Friday in 1442, after hearing a fiery sermon on Christ’s Passion, Rita returned to her monastery and prayed before an image of Christ. Asking to participate in the pain caused by Christ’s crown of thorns, she immediately received from the image a wound in her forehead, which remained with her until her death.

Up until the 1980’s prayer cards with St. Rita on it called to the persons empathy for the pain and suffering she endured.

The list goes on and on, half nude St. Sebastian shot full of arrows by his own Roman archers which he commanded, St. Lucy with her eyeballs ripped out and presented on a platter, the depiction of torture is endless. Yet again, here we have a link back to the Paganism that the church so desperately wants to rid itself of, yet it embraces it.

Paganism is eye-intense. It is based on cultic exhibitionism, in which sex and sadomasochism and joined. The ancient chthonian mysteries have never disappeared from the church...Blood torture ecstasy and tears. This lurid sensationalism makes Catholicism the emotionally most complete cosmology in religious history. Italy added pagan sex and violence to the ascetic Palestinian creed. As so to Hollywood, the modern Rome; it is pagan sex and violence that have flowered so vividly in our mass media.

The art of Roman Catholicism is designed to elicit a visceral response from the viewer:

The portrait format of Jesus in western Europe was invented during the late Middle Ages as a way of evoking an emotional relationship to God that privatized belief and made the image central to the practice of devotion. Empathy remained the principal emotional framework in the devotional lives of many Christians in Europe and North America from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The role of suffering in visual piety therefore remained important in Roman Catholic Europe and the New World.

There is not only a glorification of the body, pain and suffering in the art of the church, but also in it’s reliquaries with tattered century old body parts and corpses of saints on display. Here again Catholics are faced with the torture and ultimate transgression of the body, which they are supposed to totally deny exists. It seems only natural after being exposed and pounded with this totally sadomasochistic iconography for years that the urge to want to participate in that ritual may be fostered. Yet this kind of feeling, a feeling of pleasurable masochism, is forbidden. Therein lies the irony that sinsexsalvation attempts to expose.

Part Five

sinsexsalvation project history and process

afire with a great love for God. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans, and so excessive was the sweetness caused by this intense pain that one can never wish to lose it...it is not bodily pain but spiritual

St. Theresa Eroticism

5.1 History-

sinsexsalvation came to fruition one sunny day in August of 1996 sitting atop the San Francisco MOMA outer balcony writing in my journal.

...I can totally see it--the crucifixion scene with my chair, kneeling in the church, bound to the knee rests, drinking of the cup--taking communion, basically OBEYING. Doing as I am told--and the demons that constantly haunt me...they of course would be somehow manifested in this. I’m starting to feel that I will never escape this imagery. The stigma of Catholicism is forever a part of my experience. The _rituals_, the ceremony....this is what attracts me to it--the submission. GOD--it is all so divine....it’s so strange that I have such strong feelings about Catholicism...it wasn’t even ever forced on me, at least, as far as ritual going to church. But I suppose in the home itself, in my family and it’s bigoted racist values--it was there even stronger. I definitely have learned to ‘obey’. 

It was at that time that I realized what my next project should be and what ideas I needed to start working on.

The original conception of sinsexsalvation was as a VRML environment. I had at that time been working furiously in animation and specifically with Wavefront/Alias™ software. I thought I could model a gothic cathedral and use video mapping to employ video throughout the piece. After further investigation into this, and after the software license to Wavefront/Alias™ was not renewed, I decided that sinsexsalvation should be realized in a medium that I was more familiar with.

I was successful earlier in my career with sculpture and also felt that returning to working in the physical world would be a welcomed contrast to the year and a half of digital immersion I had been in. So I started working on an installation treatment for the project. It was at that point that I took a woodworking class taught by Mr. Sidney Fleisher to help with the production aspects of the piece.

sinsexsalvation took on many forms early on including a see -through table/reliquary with audio triggers, and a wall mounted shrine. It wasn’t too long, however, after my decision to make sinsexsalvation an installation that I came up with the idea to make people kneel and peer through a peephole. This made it very obvious that the content of the visual aspect of the piece would have to be played out somehow with video and the installation quickly evolved into what the current structure.

The sinsexsalvation cross structure was built over a period of 10 months with the divine guidance of Mr. Sidney Fleisher, resident furniture designer and woodworker in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institutes architectural department.

Several mock-ups were made which helped in determining the final dimensions of the cross structure.

The cross was constructed of 3/4" birch plywood and 1/8" x 3/4" aluminum trim. Special jigs were made to cut the angles on the cross so that they were all the same, and the pieces were all jointed together with a biscuit jointer. The structure was constructed in three pieces for ease of transportation and assembly. The aluminum trim was fastened onto the edges of the structure with special self drilling bolts. For security of the decks and monitors which would reside inside the structure, locks were added on all three of the doors.

The audio for sinsexsalvation was composed at my home studio. My hardware setup at home consists of a Korg N364 16 track polyphonic sequencer, a Studio Quad digital effects processor, a Mackie 1202 mixer and a PowerTower Pro 225 CPU. The software that I used in composing the audio was ProTools and Studio Vision Pro.

The process of composing audio is, for me, a conglomeration of discreet layers assembled together. First and over the last year or so I gathered sounds and little tid-bits of melodies which I liked, and started assembling them in my computer sequencer and in my mind. I rely very heavily on my ‘ear’ to tell me what sounds good and to replay tones that I create in either my mind or hear somewhere else. For example, I may hear something on the radio that I like, so I will come home and play around what I have heard on my keyboard/sequencer to find out if there are maybe even more interesting ways of arranging the notes/sounds. This process of playing is referred to in music circles as ‘playing by ear’ because I am able to hear something and play it without seeing any notation of that which I have heard.

Next I assemble the bits and pieces into some sort of composition using my keyboard sequencer recording midi events into my computer sequencing software, Studio Vision Pro, which in return triggers the midi to play on my keyboard when and where I tell it to. This is vastly different than working as a analog musician in that using a sequencer gives the power to have 16 different rhythms, sounds, melodies, or whatever at the same time, and moreover I am able to record each of these separately and individually and place them where I please within the composition (time-wise) very easily. Since I work best alone, using electronic means of composing has opened up a whole new world and life for my compositions.

After the midi is recorded into the computer, I then went about layering the composition with samples. Samples for sinsexsalvation were used from records that my fathers’ parents would make him listen to when he was young. The record had a priest reading Hail Mary and Our Father (see appendix B) with a pipe organ in the background. Samples were also used from Mozart’s Requiem (my favourite) and from a record of Gregorian Easter Mass.

The samples were recorded into my computer via Pro Tools and my mixer and then imported into Vision. Once the samples were in the computer, I then went about the task of distorting and manipulating them by stretching them out over time, pitch-shifting, and chopping them up until I was happy with how they sounded.

I then took the midi portion of the composition and made it, without any samples, into a subsequence. That layer, without samples or any other manipulation (such as processing) becomes the 1st layer. I then create a new sequence by pasting the subsequence into a new sequence window in Vision, set the original subsequence on an infinite loop and start adding the samples in a such a fashion so that through time the sounds get denser and richer.

I perform this process repeatedly until I come up with the final product, which usually ends up being 6-8 layers deep.

My goal in this version of the audio was to create an ambient and dark mood that had possibly familiar sounds in it (like the pipe organ) which would hint at the context of the Catholic Church. For instance, little bits of chopped up prayers may give the viewer an idea that the piece may have something to do with Catholicism, but since it is in a totally foreign context and space they are forced to make some of their own assumptions and conclusions about the juxtaposition of the eerie, dark audio with sacred prayers.

One technique I employed to help convey feelings of darkness through the audio was the use of low frequencies and timbres throughout the compositions. Over time, the listener gets new pieces of information and the texture of the audio gets thicker and more chaotic through heavier and more frequent triggering of the samples. The audio loop for this piece was 40 minutes, and was continually looped throughout the installation in the room. 2 EV monitors and a subwoofer were used because of the frequency factor.

The video for sinsexsalvation was shot in one day on February 27, 1998. It was my first attempt at directing and producing and the experience was extremely intense as I am very accustomed to working alone. The complexity of the video was such that it required a 10 person crew:

Director - Shannon Johnson

Director of Photography/ Camera 2 - Julia Meltzer

Camera 1 - Liz Miller

Producer - Kathleen Brandt

Gaffer/fog wrangler - Ju-Mei Sheih

Still Photography/St. Theresa - Wendy Vissar

Still Photography/Mistress and Slave - Chien-chen Tsao

Acting Coach/Production Assistant - Amanda Ramos

Makeup Artist - Cindy List

Lighting- Eleanor Goldsmith

Actress - Talin Shahinian

My role as director was to make sure that the actress was happy (not easy!) and that I was relaying what I needed to get on video to the camera people. I would tell the actress what I wanted her to do and what the mood of the scene was, and then tried to coach her throughout the take on how to achieve what I was looking for. It was difficult mainly because the actress had all kinds of ideas about what she thought should happen and seemed to be worried about everything except what she was supposed to be worrying about, which was her acting. The set for the video was the same for all three shoots to simplify things. Lighting was done the day before so that the crew did not have to worry about it the day of the shoot although of course many adjustments had to be made which was the DOP’s responsibility.

Each shoot had different lighting: a high backlight for the mistress to give her an air of confidence and power, low side-lighting for the slave with textures for a darker, more suffocated looking set, and finally diffused light for St. Theresa. Fog was used primarily in the mistress shoot to add some interesting texture and to fill in some of the backlit area behind her which seemed to work well. Scaffolding was used for the camera work for much of the slave shoot so that we could get a steep angle from above making her more submissive and likewise much of the mistress was shot from below. The entire production lasted approximately 11 hours.

Pre-production for the video portion of sinsexsalvation started in September of 1997. Over that time I have kept a journal of ideas and images that have interested and inspired me (see Appendix B). Pre-production planning went into full effect the month before the shoot and schedules, phone lists, meetings and duties were diligently attended to. The video shoot was changed twice and the actress almost backed out two days before due to a back injury. A makeup artist was employed to help create each look and mood that I wanted on the actress. This was achieved by looking at photographs that I liked and she and I worked together to create the end products. Likewise the camera persons were also prepared for the shoot by looking at videos that I find interesting along with video selections to look at in regards to choices for angles and style. Constant contact was kept up with the actress for sinsexsalvation, and travel and lodging arrangements were made.

The intent of sinsexsalvation is to provide an environment reminiscent of the experience of ritual theater in the Catholic church that questions the Catholic proclamation that sadomasochism is a blasphemous, perverted and satanic way of life, and places the audience in the position to experience the rituals of Catholicism as dually sadomasochistic. It is, however, a completely subjective experience and although I would expect all of the audience to understand the cultural contexts and implications of the piece, the real mark is left on persons involved in and bound to these rituals. If we cannot see the roots of that which we exist through, then we will never truly understand the nature of ourselves and who we are.

It is not clear to me where sinsexsalvation should find it’s home in the world as an installation. I created sinsexsalvation with the thought that it would cross-over into several different communities: the art community, the S/M community, and the gothic-industrial community. I suspect that display of the piece in these different contexts will provide some insight on where to go with it, what to emphasize or improve, and what works. As a video installation in the setting of the art world I suspect that, due to the subject matter, sinsexsalvation will be difficult to get into shows. I will of course try, but at least in the United States, the residues of ‘family values’ and the morality crusade of the right wing is infiltrating funding and certainty, it is difficult to get funding and shows as an artist period let alone when dealing with issues of religion and sexuality in joint perspective. As an installation in S/M and industrial/gothic communities I would expect success in getting it seen and acceptance of the piece, however the concern then becomes -- is this just a side show? Is the installation something to entertain you while you take a break to go to the restroom or is it a centerpiece or feature at the venue? For me, only the latter seems acceptable -- therein lies my dilemma. How do I get sinsexsalvation out into the world and seen without having it hide in a corner? Maybe hiding in a corner is how it will sneak up on you. It will be interesting to observe how the installation manifests itself in different environments.

I have encountered many challenges in the making of sinsexsalvation. Certainly there is no doubt that the field of vision achieved with the current peephole is not optimal. I would like to try a larger diameter hole in the front and perhaps even two eye-holes or an eye-slit. I also would like to get the audience more involved in the ritual. I plan to build a prayer candle altar for people to light candles when they enter the installation and create a book of intentions that perhaps will be labeled ‘blasphemous intentions’. I also know that there are some problems with synchronization of the video loops and although it is not important to me that the images are totally synched -- it is important that all three images are in some mode of play when each person looks through the peephole.

I have also been rethinking the three channels and perhaps the piece would be stronger (and more financially feasible) if I edited it down to one channel and had a larger monitor. That could take care of some of the field of view problems and also perhaps make it more visually exciting while still keeping the idea of the trinity in place. After all -- let us not forget that the trinity is one person and three at the same time. So it seems that conceptually one channel versus three would fit in just fine.

At the opening of sinsexsalvation it was mentioned that there was a confusion between a reverence for Catholicism and a want to shock and subvert the Catholicism. I am aware of these contradictions and am slowly working them out -- but I can say that I do not wish to any way uphold the ideals of Catholicism as either normal or desirable. I believe that the way I will head with the piece will be towards a more hellish, horror type representation of Catholicism rather than recreating the very ritual that I wish to critique and having it seem reverent. I want to recreate the ritual, but I want it to be clear that the purpose it serves in the installation is different that what it serves in the church. In the installation it must be clear that the ritual submission brings pleasure. It must be clear that the reason I wish to recreate the ritual is to show its inherent subversiveness.

Perhaps this is achieved by constructing the ambiance of the space so that it is even darker, more torturous, more blasphemous. Maybe I bring in statues of martyrs surrounding the piece. Maybe the structure becomes more of a contraption on which you must suffer.

The audio for sinsexsalvation is still in its infancy and it is difficult for me to speak with any authority on what it will eventually turn out to be. I definitely know that I want separate channels of audio within the structure itself and that this audio will be much less ambient than the current version and will be more narrative. Some ideas for this include incorporating whispers of confession, exerpts of mass and prayers, and perhaps some whipping sounds from an S/M scene. The narrative of this audio could come from many areas. The confession could perhaps be the whispering of sexual services that I performed on my partner the night before. The mass and prayers could be examples of me participating in the ritual. The concern is how this audio will relate to the existing video -- and that is something that I am going to have to work out.

Clearly, I will continue to work within the subject matter of Catholicism and perhaps even S/M. I am very intrigued by the hundreds of martyred saints that so willingly were lead to their death (or gave their life) in the name of God and am sure that I will somehow manifest this interest in a new project. I also would like to work on a web version of sinsexsalvation and a VRML environment has already been created in anticipation of such.

I am not exactly sure where I will go from here with all of my new skills. I would love to work in video production for a while, and plan to pursue any leads in that direction. I also would like to get in on the creative/conceptual side of web design and that seems a fruitful possibility. Most of all, though, I would like to find a teaching job somewhere so that I could continue to work on my art, continue to work with interesting people, and have the tools at my grasp to do it with. One thing is for certain, the twisting and turning of my mind will not allow me to stop producing art.

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