Gary Cannone Interview about taking clothes off of superheroes!

Larisa asks Gary Cannone about disrobing superheroes. Gary answers.



DAC: Why did you choose "undressing" as the action?

Gary Cannone: A superhero's costume is a simple way of separating a superhero from a non-superhero in a public space (a supervillain's functions the same way). As such the costume seems to help the superhero hold a certain amount of power without the need to demo his or her skills.Maybe this is so obvious that it need not be mentioned but the costumes themselves are fetishistic. Though I have never been a big consumer of superhero-related culture I have noticed that there seems to be a lot of narratives about unmasking heroes and finding out their true/secret identity. I have always found these narratives to have a subtext that is sexual and sometimes rooted in pleasure of humiliation (denuding). My piece uses a general list of characters from the fictional superhero universe that includes not only superheros but super villains (e.g. The Joker), secret identities (e.g. Bruce Wayne), and hangers on (e.g. Lois Lane). Each of these categories has a hierarchical relationship to the group as a whole and some of the participants are not costume wearers (secret identities, hangers on). Every permutation of x undressing y is listed formulaically in a grid. So you have examples like Batman undressing the Joker, Lois Lane undressing Wonder Woman, Bruce Wayne undressing Spider Man, etc... which combine to create a matrix of various imagined hierarchical-sexual scenarios/relationships. So to get back to your original question, "undressing" was used because it put a lot of these things into action, while the gridding weirdly ritualizes or detaches it somewhat for me.