content warning: sex references, dysphoria references, nudity, and (tattoo) needles

Just Collaborators

As you know, I process everything through the content I consume. That’s clear to anyone who looks at my work. It’s even clearer to you when you tell me about something your mum did once and I respond with an Emmerdale storyline. Thus when you recommend me memoirs of queer love, I think of our queer love. And when I think of our queer love, I dont think of us, I think of the last song I heard, or the last fan fiction I read, or the last artwork I looked at.

The two memoirs you’ve recommended to me in the last year are The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson and Just Kids by Patti Smith. I want to write a memoir about you but I want to write it now. Thus, this essay more closely follows the format of Maggie Nelson writing to her partner Harry Dodge in the present. Rather than the the format of Patti Smith writing about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe a few decades after he had died.

When I read Just Kids I feel nostalgic for a time we never lived in, as well as for a future we have promised each other. “He inscribed a few lines of poetry, portraying us as the gypsy and the fool, [...]. In the clanging swirl of our lives, these roles would reverse many times.” (Smith, 2010). This whole book feels like an inscription you have written for me, and every time I read it, we continually exchange the roles of Patti and Robert.

Sometimes I am Patti trying to understand our practice and relationship through a different collaborative relationship. Patti describes discovering Alfred Stieglitz’s nude photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe, and that she “focused on Georgia O’Keeffe as she related to Stieglitz”(Smith, 2010). This whole essay documents me trying to understand our practice and relationship through other collaborative relationships. If there is no representation in the media I consume of the love that I feel then how am I meant to process it? Like Patti, I’m having to look to romantic duos to explain our non-romantic love. I spent many years presuming my loves had to be romantic and sexual, and not understanding the value of relationships without those things. Friends could only be just friends because I couldn’t find any media depicting meaningful friendships as anything but inferior to romantic love. I didn’t know such a thing was possible.

When we first started collaborating, we modelled ourselves after Gilbert and George. We couldn’t think of any other queer collaborative duos, so they became a running joke throughout our shared practice. But we’re nothing at all like Gilbert and George! We aren’t in a romantic or sexual relationship, we aren’t Tories, and we don’t complete each other. Gilbert and George consider themselves to be a single artist, but you and I are two whole artists who often come together to make work. One philosophy we do share with Gilbert and George though is the idea that everything has the potential to be art. Their relationship is their art and so is ours, but where their relationship centres around sex, ours centres around domesticity and silliness.

When you first told me that I had to read Just Kids, you compared my practice with Robert’s. “Robert was not a voyeur. He always said that he had to be authentically involved with the work that came out of his S&M pursuits” (Smith, 2010). Although, as an asexual person, I’ve never had much interest in S&M, I am always “authentically involved with” (Smith, 2010) the topics discussed in my/our work. Any fandom I’ve ever made work about has been a fandom I am or was a part of. When I was working on The Amazing Book Hits Different, I included messages from phannie group chats I was part of and tweets from other Dan and Phil fans. While recently making work about Harry Styles, I’ve been trying to make friends with other Directioners online and endlessly reading Larry Stylinson fan fictions. That one time I tried to intersect my One Direction work with Thomas the Tank Engine, you told me that it was probably some of my work work. Mostly because I had no investment in Thomas the Tank Engine. My best work references the media I’m consuming and invested in and thus processing my life through, not just whatever media is most convenient.

Colin Lievens, LARRY IS REAL, 2020

More importantly though, as trans people, both you and I feel compelled to document our transness. “I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them” (Mapplethorpe, 1988). We, compared to most trans people, have a lot of privilege and are reasonably safe to make work about our experiences. Thus we have maybe even a moral duty to honestly and explicitly document our experiences for those who can’t. That’s not to say that our work is particularly trying to educate people. “It was about me wanting to see things” (Mapplethorpe, 1988), we’re trying to make the work that we want to see in the world.

Gilbert and George often identify themselves with outsiders more generally. I’d be in support of this if it wasn’t for the fact that they think that it gives them permission to use slurs that don’t belong to them or talk about things that neither of them have actually experienced. Also, if I’m calling out Gilbert and George for their racism, I should also acknowledge Robert Mapplethopre’s fetishisation of black men in The Black Book. I don’t want to excuse Robert for this but I do think that the biggest difference between these works is that Gilbert and George’s racism was deliberate. Robert’s racism and fetishisation came out of not knowing any better.

Perhaps a nicer queerer collaborative duo we could have modelled ourselves after is Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. They were gender-non-conforming, jewish, feminist icons and anti-Nazi activists. Cahun referred to Moore as “l'autre moi” which translates to “the other me” (Cahun, n.d.). Sometimes I feel like that about you, like you and I aren’t one person, but that we do exist as extensions of each other. Just as I’m sure Claude and Marcel had only each other to contextualise their understandings of gender, my gender feels like it exists within the context of yours. That time you referred to me as he, I didn’t mind because it felt like more of a statement about your gender than mine. Plus I often feel like you understand my gender as well as, if not better than, I do.

Before I met you, I’d been working on a series of bad dances, unapologetically celebrating my non-sexy body. This was while I was still living in Brighton and volunteering at the museum. I kind of fell into the Museum Collective when they were planning events around the Artist Rooms Gilbert and George exhibition. We were given a crash course on the work of Gilbert and George, and I, unsurprisingly, was most excited about their Bend It performances. The song itself talks quite directly about sex as well as saying that the duo are “made to fit together just like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle”(Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, 1967). So, I recreated Bend It alone. I didn’t want a relationship like Gilbert and George’s, I didn’t want to have sex or be completed by another person. Unlike Gilbert and George, who consider themselves to be one artist, I am one artist without needing anyone else.

Sometimes you are Robert, “always my first listener” (Smith, 2010). When I read you a previous draft of this essay, not only did you point out all of the bits that desperately needed changing, but you reminded me of the time that we danced to Bend It together. I could argue that dancing to it with you was a significant moment, in which we came together as one artist, giving up our solo practices to dedicate our lives to each other. That would be a complete lie though. I’d totally forgotten about dancing to it with you until you reminded me. Plus, I’ve danced to to it with a bunch of people, including various other members of the Museum Collective. It’s a fun dance and a silly song, who wouldn’t want to join me?

Sometimes you are Patti cutting my hair, your bathroom becoming the queer salon. “[Robert was] inspecting his hair in the mirror. “Can you cut it like a fifties rock star?”” (Smith, 2010). The last time you changed my hair, you cut it short and dyed it brown for a durational performance I was undertaking. I had four appointments with gender doctors in the space of two weeks, and I knew I couldn’t show up to any of those appointments with my usual pink hair. So you dyed my hair, and I reorganised my clothes, not allowing myself anything pink for two weeks. On a practical level, that work couldn’t have happened without you. Most importantly though, on an emotional level, the work couldn’t have happened without you. When I left my first appointment, I called you before I called my mum, and then we got donuts from Sainsbury’s on the way back to your flat. You told me to take my binder off and we drank chai tea.

Colin Lievens, Arbitrary Barriers (detail), 2020

I can’t drink chai without thinking of you, even if I was the one who introduced you to it. The week you fell in love with it has now become officially known as The Week I Discovered Chai, despite that being probably the least eventful part of the whole week. I spent a lot of that week, just like a lot of the time I’ve spent with you, half naked, or in the bath, or drinking chai tea. I think the drinking of chai sums us up pretty perfectly though. My mum tells me stories about drinking alcohol and smoking weed in her youth, and Patti regularly references a “rampant use of drugs” (Smith, 2010) throughout Just Kids. We’re far more wholesome than that though, we drink tea. Plus the detail of it specifically being chai rather than English Breakfast perfectly summarises our mildly alternative form of domesticity. In this case, you are Patti, whose “limited knowledge [of drugs] came from observing Robert” (Smith, 2010) and I am Robert, introducing you to the world of drugs or, in our case, chai.

Joe Lawn and Colin Lievens, The Week I Discovered Chai (details), 2019

We were both Robert in that week, just as he taught Patti how to make necklaces, you taught me about alginate and how to make a stir fry, and in turn I taught you how to tattoo. Just Like when Patti asked Vali Myers “outright if she would tattoo my knee” (Smith, 2010), I asked you in that week to tattoo my thigh. Whenever I get tattooed I think about time. I knew that for the rest of my life, whenever I look at my right knee, I will think of you. That tattoo looked towards the future more than most of my others though. I had found an obscure Gilbert and George reference, and we agreed that you would tattoo me with the first of the three lines that Gilbert and George had written. We promised that you would add the next line of the tattoo the next time we took our artistic practice to the next level. A few months ago, you suggested you could add the next part to the tattoo when we move in together.

It wasn’t until after tattoos had made their way into a few of my performances that I came across Hancock and Kelly’s Tattoo. As you know, I think tattooing is dramatically underused in contemporary art, but I don’t think this performance does the medium justice. In it, the two collaborators seem to roll around on the floor for a while, before Traci Kelly enters a brightly lit greenhouse, where a tattoo artist tattoos her back with the wallpaper pattern from Richard Hancock’s childhood home. We’ve both got tattoos, we both know that receiving a tattoo is an incredibly intimate act that necessitates complete trust between the person giving the tattoo and the person receiving it. I’m not saying Kelly doesn’t trust the person tattooing her, but it does feel like they’re missing out on some explicit intimacy between her and Hancock. The pair feel unfathomably distant from each other in this performance. They’re separated by glass and don’t even seem to look at each other. You’ve heard me rant enough times about how much I hate shock for the sake of shock, and the tattooing in this performance feels like the perfect example of that. When is a performance artist going to use tattooing for anything other than being shocking?

Hancock and Kelly, Tattoo, 2007

Plenty of Robert’s photos, especially those depicting the S&M scene in New York, are considered shocking even these days. Be he said that “I don’t like that particular word ‘shocking.’ I’m looking for the unexpected” (Mapplethorpe, 1988). We’ve found that sometimes shock is unavoidable. Trans bodies can be considered shocking, but how are we meant to contemplate them without acknowledging them? I’m okay with shock if it doesn’t act alone. I can forgive shock if it serves a purpose and exists alongside something else. What I’m tired of is shock existing only for the sake of shock, and that’s unfortunately what tattooing is often used for in art.

Our tattoo documents time and intimacy, as well as an ongoing commitment to each other, but perhaps once the tattoo is, with the third part, finished then we are too? When Marina Abramović and Ulay first planned on walking the length of the Great Wall of China, they planned to meet in the middle to marry. But in the eight years between coming up with the idea, and finally being allowed by the Chinese government to do it, their relationship had drastically changed, and they agreed instead to break up after ninety days of walking towards each other. We’ve been collaborating for a year now, and that tattoo marked not a wedding but a commitment to each other. Perhaps it marked the same point as Marina and Ulay’s initial idea to walk the length of the Great Wall of China. Then the last line of the tattoo will mark the end of our collaboration, like the eventual walking ended theirs. I know it feels morbid to consider breaking up with you in the middle of a love letter, but Marina and Ulay made incredible art for twelve years. I would be honoured to collaborate with you for that long.

Joe Lawn and Colin Lievens, Phone Sex (detail), 2020

Sometimes we are both Robert, posting each other “funny little letters describing his work, his health, his trials, and always his love” (Smith, 2010). While in quarantine, we’ve been posting a book back and forth, giving each other artistic tasks to fulfil. When it started, I most wanted to collaborate with you for the sake of continuing to collaborate with you. Art is my love language, and working on this book makes me feel connected to you. The longer we’ve been working on it though, the more it feels like a really clear document of our relationship. Even when we’re apart, we continue to make silly things, drink tea, and express our love for each other.

It’s also in this time that we’ve both read Just Kids so have made a conscious effort to pay homage to Robert and Patti. Turning our “attention to making necklaces” (Smith, 2010), you made me a necklace and earring out of stones from your local park, and in return I wove you a bracelet out of embroidery thread. Using whatever we can get our hands on, just like them.

Sometimes I am Patti, writing about our relationship and collaboration. We have spent just over a year collaborating, but I want to write about our whole lives together. I can see us being middle aged, me with faded top surgery scars, you having eventually bought a house with Joe. Maybe I’m still a lodger in your spare room, or maybe you’ve moved down to Brighton to raise a kid. I’m looking back on this essay, feeling like a million years ago, feeling so short compared to the books (or at least fan fictions) that I’ve published since then. You often joke about me winning the Turner Prize and you riding on my coat tails, making a career out of knowing me. But in this case I am Robert, “I want everyone to hear you” (Smith, 2010). You’re one of the most talented artists I have ever seen, I want to be equal to you. I would be honoured to win the Turner Prize with you.

I’m documenting our relationship because it seems to be rare in the media, but I dont think it is rare in real life at all. And I think it would be even less rare if more people understood the value of non-romantic relationships. That’s why I make so much work about loving my friends, that’s why I’m writing this to you now. Who says the artists’ muse has to be an object of romantic or sexual desire? Thank you for collaborating with me for the last year, you are “the artist of my life” (Smith, 2010) I hope we can continue for at least another eleven more. I love you.

Images

Lawn, J. and Lievens, C., 2019, The Week I Discovered Chai [performance, mixed media].

Lievens, C., 2019. The Amazing Book Hits Different [mixed media]. Available at: https://www.colinlievens.com/portfolio/hitsdifferent [Accessed 10 May 2020].

Mapplethorpe, R., 1978. Self Portrait With Whip. [photograph].

Lievens, C., LARRY IS REAL [mixed media].

Gilbert and George, 1981. The World Of Gilbert And George. [video].

Lievens, C., 2018. Bend It. [performance, video]. Available at: https://youtu.be/J7s3Tqsp7Zs [Accessed 20 May 2020].

Lievens, C., 2020, Arbitrary Barriers [performance].

Lawn, J. and Lievens, C., 2019, The Week I Discovered Chai [performance, mixed media].

Gilbert & George, 1971. The Ten Speeches. [ten letterpress and relief halftone with letterpress cover].

Lawn, J. and Lievens, C., 2019, The Week I Discovered Chai [performance, mixed media].

Kelly, T. and Hancock, R., 2007. Tattoo. [performance]. Available at: https://vimeo.com/66397898 [Accessed 15 May 2020].

Mapplethorpe, R., 1979. Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter. [photograph].

Lawn, J. and Lievens, C., 2019, The Week I Discovered Chai [performance, mixed media].

Lawn, J. and Lievens, C., 2020, PLEASE DO NOT BEND [mixed media].

Lawn, J. Lievens, C., 2020, Untitled (after Robert Mapplethorpe) [mixed media].

Seeff, N., 1970, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe in New York [photograph].

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