LADA’s Summer Programme: Week 4

George Chakravarthi

Barflies

Originally a three-screen installation, Barflies offers representations of different femininities embodied by transvestites and cross-dressers, the pleasures, fears and dangers of being in public ‘en femme’ and the relationship they have with the cisgender heterosexual male.

The different classifications of Maureen, Claire and Jasmine signify some of the variations found within feminine identities in the transvestite/cross-dressing communities. Barflies also highlights the specificity of TV/cross-dressers in relation to public, social spaces. Many people assigned female at birth do not feel comfortable alone in bars because of the threat of unwanted attention from cisgender heterosexual men. Being out in a social space such as a bar for most TV/cross-dressers is often celebrated as a triumph, where a mixture of fear and delight may be experienced through a public expression of one’s female self.

Recorded on telephone chat-lines, the soundtrack offers an intimate undercurrent to the unedited footage. Transvestites, transsexuals, cross-dressers and their seekers engage in conversations which interlace the private, confessional and sexual.

Barflies was most recently screened by the Live Art Development Agency in 2018 as part of the LADA Screens programme, a series of online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short videos, films and archival footage.

George Chakravarthi’s artistic practice spans almost two decades of live performance, video installation and photography. Predominantly engaging with the politics of identity and representations of the self, the works often cross and renegotiate the restrictions of space, culture and heritage.

Barflies – An Afterword

Simply shot on a mini DV camera, wedged by the optics behind the bar between the upside-down spirits and above buckets of ice and lemon, the most difficult aspect of making Barflies was to get venues to permit filming on their premises. 9/11 had just happened and the fear that the devastation had escalated meant that all public spaces were on high alert. Everyone, especially if you were brown, was treated with suspicion and blame. London was congested with security at every corner and the number of CCTV cameras seemed to double overnight. Determined to make this work as conceived, just weeks before the disaster, I started the research and preparations. The conversations with bar managers and pub owners about the context and details of the work were frustratingly lengthy and met with concerns and ultimately rejection. However, I did manage to persuade a few bars, which met my requirements and their demands. Filming commenced having confirmed three specific types of venues. I secured the use of a traditional English pub, a more modern bar and a bar/night club – all ‘straight’ social spaces in predominantly white areas.

The production was simple and straightforward. I would arrive dressed, with fully charged camera batteries and an assistant. Having researched the space on previous visits, all decisions had been made about composition, angles and the best spots at the bar for traffic flow and lighting (no extra lights or any other technical equipment were allowed by the venue or used). My assistant would help me set up the camera while I arranged myself in position, she would press record when ready and sit at the far end of the bar to keep an eye on things. She would also give me a countdown of the running time using her hands when I casually glanced over at her during shooting. The mini DV tapes were limited to 60 minutes, so it was crucial not to waste any time once the camera had started rolling. Each individual scene is one hour long to make the triptych.

The exits were easy. I would get up and leave the bar (as seen) and my assistant would turn the camera off, take it off the shelf and find me in a dark corner somewhere, emotionally drained and relieved! We did this several times over weeks, sometimes it wouldn’t work; the bar would remain empty for hours, meaning we’d have to rewind the tape and start again or the alchemy of what I was trying to capture would not manifest.

The soundtrack was recorded over the telephone using a pick-up, a tiny cable running from the landline handset to a music system and onto a cassette. I would call telephone chat-lines catering to ‘trannies’, CDs (crossdressers) and their ‘seekers’. The messages I listened to and the conversations I engaged in were predominantly sexual but sometimes confessional, uncomfortable and moving. I was aiming to achieve a fine balance, which layered the visible (screen) and the invisible (soundtrack), to reveal and bind the externally presented and internally shrouded identities.

I don’t often look back at work once it’s complete and exhibited and it’s near impossible to return to the driving force, which led the work. However, having it re-screened seventeen years on inspires me to re-evaluate and analyse the work in hindsight and in current contexts and developments. It seems now, that the piece encapsulates other possibilities, which shift and transform from screen to screen and frame by frame. Art is often received within its historical context, offering a glimpse of what’s been attended to; Barflies somewhat inscribes the evolution of current movements with relevant insights. What comes forth now is the ambience of shame and repulsion, conventional European ideals of beauty and femininity, social strata and misogyny.

The three trans personas had names, Maureen, Claire and Jasmine. Maureen was a transvestite and unapologetically masculine. Claire was a transsexual/transwoman, and Jasmine, somewhere in-between and somewhat larger in life and sexuality. Each one was based on individuals I had met or observed in niche bars and clubs. It was fascinating to sketch and create these identities. They evolved through a number of stages and costumes but versions of these archetypes are still prevalent in underground trans spaces and fetish clubs.

What transpires with Barflies now, particularly in the context of the social media phenomenon, is the indiscriminate disclosure each frame and recorded conversation exemplifies. The compulsion to overshare, often risky expressions of vulnerability and the intemperate outbursts of our internal worlds propelled by our need for connection and validation, can all be witnessed on the three screens. Maureen, Jasmine and Claire ask to be seen, accepted or celebrated. One could perceive Barflies as one of the earlier, real-life attempts to engage in these dialogues, though unlike and without the somewhat remote safety of our contemporary digital devices.

The dangers, of course, are elevated when putting your physical self, centre stage in a physically crowded space, as experienced while making the piece. The risks of humiliation, rejection and even violence are high. As Maureen, this was particularly palpable and is evident on screen. This facet of the work required some level of care and management to generate the footage. Performing and directing Barflies simultaneously was a daunting task. There was a continuous shift and adjustment in my consciousness, from artist, performer, director, to my real identity, governed by specific histories and experiences.

Claire, the central figure in the triptych is what I classify as a transwoman. Being the most socially ‘acceptable’ of the three also meant having to make her conform to western, heterocentric stereotypes in attire and social behaviour. She is not overtly sexual, feminine but not too feminine and friendly but reserved. Her acceptability was reinforced by the numerous positive interactions with males and females. Her vulnerability surging throughout at the danger of being ‘found out’. I enjoyed being Claire. She integrated easily, blending into the moving traffic of people. I sometimes became the backdrop of the piece and the punters the cast. I experienced, in small but significant ways, the joys of natural and easy exchanges, albeit at the cost of keeping my gender identity hidden.

The fetish for ‘trannies’, CDs (crossdressers) and transwomen is prevalent in our culture as evidenced in the soundtrack. My experience as Jasmine can further corroborate the fascination with ‘chicks with dicks’, a term commonly used in pornography and also by callers on the soundtrack. As Jasmine, I felt strangely and simultaneously empowered and vulnerable. The very high heels made me appear tall and imposing and gave me the bravado required to express this persona. I was brazen and sexually indiscriminate, which commanded attention and fear at the same time. Men behaved badly around me; pushy, insistent and competitive. Though this gave me a certain thrill and helped shape the work, it also made me feel objectified and distrustful. This was perhaps the biggest insight into the cisgender male psyche in the given space and context. I became compelled to bridge attraction with meaningful conversation in my exchanges, though the primal male gaze was adamant and overbearing. There was little beyond or between being surveyed and approached and I was consistently aware of the possible consequences of enticing an ill-judged interaction.

Barflies is also about race. Depending on the viewer’s experience, awareness and sensibility, it exposes micro-nuances about race and indeed offers other readings beyond what is detectable. Unlike much of my practice, race was not at the fore of this work. I was interested in gendered social spaces and trans visibility. My race is visible and a given, and there is very little to add to the historic and existing discourses about race in this instance. However, it is important to highlight the othering of melaninated people in predominantly European social spaces and the compromise of selfhood for social acceptance. Sadly, the sentiments regarding race are renewed and kept fuelled by each generation. Whether it be 9/11 seventeen years ago, Brexit or the Donald Trump administration. One thing is for sure, melaninated transgender and gender non-conforming people face the highest levels of discrimination.

The devastation of Covid19 offers yet another, perhaps globally relatable reading of Barflies. As the world re-evaluates the future of social spaces and distancing, the possibilities of generating contact-based work, is perhaps a bygone artform and strategy. During this time of self-isolation, I have come to understand and appreciate my early photographic self-portraiture work from the perspective of solitude. The model required isolation, for days sometimes. I would be happily locked-in with my 35mm camera, a tripod, cable release and some low-fi lights, constructing and deconstructing myself for each image.

In fact and again, it seems that social media and the phenomenon of the ‘selfie’ is already engaged in this discipline, albeit with mostly frivolous intentions through disposable apps offering immediate results and gratification through ‘likes’.

In the current epidemic, perhaps the reading of Barflies has a layer of nostalgia for the world BC (Before Coronavirus) and an appreciation for a world without filters, masks and penalties for basic and important human rights.