No one else can have access to my corporeality and I have no access to anyone else’s. It’s purely impossible to try to change oneself completely into another person. But when one becomes an alter ego, another me, a change happens inside one’s own body. This essay examines the possibilities of feeling like another person, having different ways of operating and thinking in every day situations, and achieving different kinds of corporeal experiences, which are still framed by one’s own bodily entity.
During the 70s, artist Eleanor Antin created four independent alter egos.
Her colleague and contemporary Lynn Hershman only had one, but Hersh-man’s alter ego was more comprehensive as a person. Also I have by different means tried to create an alter ego for myself. In this essay I discuss the dif-ferent means that these three artists used in order to bring their alter egos to life. When talking about the possibility of changing oneself into another, I will at the same time approach questions about otherness and how to en-counter the other.
When a person creates an alter ego for herself, she consciously or uncon-sciously changes into another person who has her or his own feeling of cor-poreality and ways of operating in her or his environment. An alter ego goes by another name from the dominating personality; she or he can have her or his own friends, and, so to say, another way of existing. Through the experi-ences of the artists I have chosen to refer to here, I am examining the means by which one may become another and how to take over another kind of cor-poreality and personality.
Eleanor Antin’s alter egos were the King, the Black Movie Star, the Ballerina and the Nurse. The King was born when Antin wanted to find out what kind of man she would have been or what kind of man she could become. She wanted to find her perfect male self. After the King she created the Black Movie Star, who appeared briefly as one of her alter egos. By becoming the Black Movie Star she examined what it meant to be a black person in American society at that time. The Black Movie Star was followed by the Ballerina, her ideal female self, who was a talented ballerina, even though Antin herself couldn’t really dance ballet. After the Ballerina she created the Nurse, who had her origins
in popular culture and the history of nursing. Finally in the late 70s, the Black Movie Star and the Ballerina came together and returned as Eleanora Anti-nova, a black ballerina. She was an older woman, who had managed to make a fabulous career and even had danced the classical roles of Giselle and Odette despite her skin colour.
For me the alter egos of Antin appear as a bit superficial and from them I couldn’t really find the methods I was looking for. So I decided to take a closer look at Lynn Hershman’s alter ego Roberta Breitmore. She seemed to be an answer to my questions on how an alter ego could be realised, how life as an alter ego could be, and how to present these inner, private experiences to an audience in the context of art. Roberta was a complete personality with her own apartment, habits, clothes, handwriting, Weight Watchers’ membership, credit card, psychiatrist and adventures.
What, then, is the difference between the alter ego and the dominating personality, as well as the other sort of performative characters one creates in performance art? I chose to use hypnosis as my instrument, and through those experiences ended up considering the concept of body image. Body im-age is at the same time an imim-age of ideal and disgust, a feeling of one’s own body composed in interaction with surrounding reality, the ideals of society, and other people. Could the different corporeal experiences that I managed to reach in the state of hypnosis be the key to separating myself from my alter ego? And if she had her own type of body image could it give her the feeling of individuality?
In summer 2008 my alter ego, Elena Elak, lived four days in a trailer with her dog in the middle of the Finnish countryside. Before becoming Elena I was very exited about how life would be as Elena. Who is she anyway? Where does she come from? What kind of values does she possess? What is she like among other people? Does she like to be just on her own? Does she ever feel lonely?
Why did she decide to live in a trailer with her dog? Does she manage there without electricity and running water? How practical is she? Is she afraid of the dark? Does she like the clothes I bought her? And how could I manage to become someone else, like I managed to do in the state of hypnosis?
After four days I wasn’t able to answer all these questions, but I did learn something about Elena during that time. The stay in the countryside man-aged to reveal something about her everyday routines and preferences. Elena is more related to Roberta Breitmore than to Antin’s quite fictionalised alter
egos. Elena, like Roberta, is a real person with her own independence. Next I will give her a chance to live on her own in her apartment for one month. I hope I know a bit more about her after that period of time.
It doesn’t really matter if the alter ego is real or fictional. She will any-how leave traces and fragments of her stay behind her. Whether these stories are real or not doesn’t matter that much. What matters are the moments and situations when the alter ego encounters another human being and the world around them.
Viitteet
1 Pönni 1996, 24-25
2 Eleanor Antin (s. 1935, New York City) on performanssitaiteilija, elokuvantekijä ja installaatiotaiteilija. Hänen töidensä keskiössä ovat identiteetin kysymykset sekä naisten roolit yhteiskunnassa. Hän on arvostettu taiteilija ja opettaja, joka on toiminut professorina Kalifornian yliopistossa San Diegossa vuodesta 1975.
3 Psykologiassa alter ego tunnetaan sivupersoonahäiriönä tai jakautuneena persoonallisuutena, jossa ihmisen persoona on jakaantunut kahteen tai useampaan eri persoonallisuuteen, joista joku ajoittain ottaa ihmisen valtaansa. Tästä käytetään myös nimeä dissosiatiivinen identiteettihäiriö. Omassa työssäni käytän termejä alter ego ja sivupersoona merkityksessä toinen minä, toinen persoonallisuus tai persoonan sisällä oleva persoona.
4 Lynn Hershman (s. 1941, Cleveland) on taiteilija, joka käyttää töissään videota, valokuvaa, installaatiotaidetta, elokuvaa ja interaktiivista teknologiaa. Hänet tunnetaan myös nimellä Lynn Hershman Leeson. Hän on emeritus professori Kalifornian yliopistossa Davisissa.
5 Leena Kela (s. 1979, Kuusamo) on performanssitaiteilija, joka työskentelee myös valokuvan, videon ja pedagogiikan parissa. Työssään hän pyrkii lähestymään toista ja toiseuden käsitettä.
Miten toinen ihminen, eläin, luonto ja jopa oma minuus näyttäytyy toisena? Teoksissaan hän kartoittaa toisen ja itsen läsnä- ja poissaolon jatkuvaa liikettä, mikä tekee maailmaa ympärillä olemassaolevaksi.
6 Eleanor Antinin alter ego Eleanora Antinova puhuu suhteestaan Eleanor Antiniin performanssissaan ’Before the Revolution’. (Fox 1999, 113)
7 Eleanor Antin (Withers 1986, 117) 8 ks. lähdeluettelo
9 Arkkityyppi Zeuksen ominaisuudet olen poiminut hypnologi Heljä Suuronen-Geibin julkaisemattomasta luentoaineistosta ’Jokanaisen jumalattaret ja jokamiehen jumalat – Jumalatarten ja jumalten arkkityyppien avulla itsetuntemukseen’.
0 Fox 1999, 60-61
11 Heljä Suuronen-Geib, ’Jokanaisen jumalattaret ja jokamiehen jumalat – Jumalatarten ja jumalten arkkityyppien avulla itsetuntemukseen’.
12 Omat muistiinpanoni hypnoosityöskentelystä 4.2.2008 13 Fox 1999, 211-212
14 Fox 1999, 72 15 Fox 1999, 88
16 Omat muistiinpanoni Meilahden sairaalassa 10.3.2009 17 Fusaro, 2009
18 Fox 1999, 94 19 Fox 1999, 95
20 Fox 1999, 110
26 Käytän käsitettä tiedostamaton lacanilaisesti ajateltuna Helena Erkkilän luentomateriaalin pohjalta
36 Tämä ajattelumalli on myöhemmin kyseenalaistettu ks. Butler, Judith ’Bodies That Matter’
(1993) s. 4–10) 37 Fox 1999, 215 38 Hershman
Lähteet
Erkkilä, Helena ’Ruumiinkuvia! Suomalainen performanssi- ja kehotaide 1980- ja 1990-luvulla psykoanalyysin valossa’ Valtion taidemuseo, Kuvataiteen keskusarkisto 15, Helsinki 2008 Fox, Howard N. ’Waiting in the Wings: Desire and Destiny in the Art of Eleanor Antin’ (ed.) H. Fox,
Eleanor Antin, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1999
Fox, Howard N. ’A Dialogue with Eleanor Antin’ (ed.) H. Fox, Eleanor Antin, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1999
Pönni, Antti ’Toinen on ensimmäinen, lähtökohtia Emmanuel Levinasin ajatteluun’, teoksesta E.
Levinas, Etiikka ja äärettömyys, keskusteluja Philippe Nemon kanssa, Gaudeamus, Tampere 1996
Painamattomat lähteet
Fusaro, Joe ’Myths, metaphors, and more: Interview with Eleanor Antin’, Art21, 14.1.2009, http://blog.art21.org/2009/01/14/myths-metaphors-and-more-interview-with-eleanor-
antin-part-1/ (poimittu 5.3.2009)
Hershman, Lynn ’ROBERTA BREITMORE Performance in real life, using real materials, experience and real time San Fransisco, San Diego, Italy.’
http://www.lynnhershman.com/investigations/privatei/roberta_breitmore/roberta_breitmore2.html (poimittu 23.9.2008)
LaFarge, Antoinette ’Breitmore, Roberta (Lynn Hershman Leeson), 2007, http://fictive.arts.uci.edu/roberta_breitmore
(poimittu 11.3.2009)
Withers, Josephine, ’Eleanor Antin: Allegory of the Soul Author(s)’, Feminist Studies 1/12, 1986, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177987
(poimittu 21.8.2008)