Unraveling

HERODIAS: Let us go within. The voice of that man maddens me. I will not have my daughter dance while he is constantly crying out. I will not have her dance while you look at her in this fashion. In a word, I will not have her dance.
HEROD: Do not rise, my wife, my queen, it will avail thee nothing. I will not go within till she hath danced. Dance Salomé, dance for me.
HERODIAS: Do not dance, my daughter.
SALOMÉ: I am ready Tetrarch.

If there is a single thing that figures, that positions, the unattainability of desire, it would be the veil. Understanding that veils both reveal and conceal, this simple garment signifies the individuality and the otherness of the veiled in precisely the same moment.

Joel Seah’s performance and installation project is a complex manifestation of veiling, which serves to both conceal his desires, and those of others for him, at precisely the same moment that it reveals aspects of his identity. It is this duality, made manifest through the recurring motif of the veil, which positions the space and the viewer in relation to it.

The space of GAM begins with a series of thirty-six sheer handkerchiefs, suspended on thin steel rods extending from the wall. Underneath them, partially obscured, are a series of thirty-six pixilated photographs, which reveal the identity of the speaker. The words that are being spoken, or, more precisely written, are those that are included in the personal profiles found in the AOL chatroom GWM4GAM. For those of you who do not ‘have’ abbreviations, this is the gay white men for gay Asian men chatroom, and the texts are the listings the individual white men have made.

What is fascinating is not necessarily the power dynamic that is revealed through a fairly straightforward application of stereotypes – for GWM read butch, Dom, or top and for GAM read femme, sub or bottom. The white men are described variously as hairy, muscled or well built, while their preferred partner should be, more often than not, smooth. This serves very readily to establish expectations and to set boundaries. What is perhaps more intriguing are the personal quotes, appropriated from sources as diverse as Rent with “ No day but today,” to the more philosophical, “Understatement goes a long way.”

Seah establishes himself in the indeterminate space of being the object of desire and having the agency of power. In GWM4GAM, it is the Asian male who has the advantage. He can choose from the profiles, make the selections and establish the level of intimacy he desires. So, when Seah approaches the profiles, printed on handkerchiefs, and makes a selection, he asserts both his power as the object of desire and his willingness to acquiesce to the expectation the site demands.

In removing the ones he likes when he cruises the wall, Seah creates the spaces in which the exchange can be made more intimate. Here, he caresses himself with the identity of the other, with the full extent of the created identity that he is able to immediately acquire. In establishing a greater level of intimacy with those he has cruised (and in many ways taking cruising from the concrete physical exchange of the bar or the sauna to the more intimate spaces of the personal), he acknowledges that the constructed relationship is more significant, more complex, and more individual than one might expect from the chatroom exchange.

Finally, lying on the floor with a particular sheer covering his face, we see a construction in which the preferred profile, and, thereby the preferred identity covers him. What seems more intriguing however is that the pixilated image of this subject and the object of desire still remains shadowy, distant, and difficult to resolve. In recognizing this fact, Seah makes manifest the realization that as an Asian male, his identity is already positioned by his Otherness, and that his desirability as a partner, lover or an object of desire is constructed, in part, by the immutable nature of his identity, equally as much as by his individuality.

This is an extremely compelling and personal reflection of identity. It reveals the complexities inherent in engaging in any intimate personal exchange. What is unwritten is the allure of the process – of understanding that the thirty-six profiles stand, at the outset, as thirty-six real possibilities for exploration, for intimacy, or for the establishment of whatever sort of relationship is bounded by the explicit agreement of those in GWM4GAM.

I am reminded of Craig Owens seminal essay Posing. Here he speaks of the viewer in relation to the explicit desire of the work, or the subject. What remains absent from my analysis of GAM is the complicity of the viewer, which would seem to encourage Seah to find Mr. Right behind the veil of their profile. I see this as a profound shift. Here, instead of a repressed sexuality that one found in Oscar Wilde, where we began, we find an encouraged sexuality that must recognize the significance of the chatroom for finding, filtering and establishing contacts. Seah is fully aware of the natures of desire.

What is significant is not necessarily the role that Seah chooses to adopt, or his positioning in relation to the desires mapped out in the thirty-six profiles themselves. A subjective interpretation could easily reveal certain characteristics. A more detailed, more intimate, more personal exchange would be required for others. GAM is an assertion of identity that is only possible through an almost romantic, alluring expression of self. Seah does this exquisitely through print and through performance. What is made evident is what Seah chooses to show. What is absent is the thirty-seventh profile, Seah’s. I wonder exactly how Seah described himself? Having seen who he is, we are left merely to wonder what he says.

Brett M. Levine
Director
Visual Arts Gallery
The University of Alabama at Birmingham
February 2003