69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 6: Insight from beautiful and brilliant Australian performance artist Evelyn Hartogh

Brisbane-based performance artist Evelyn Hartogh photographed by misteriddles on the da.

‘Even Superheroes get the blues,’ Evelyn Hartogh, aka Wonder Woman, tells Graham Redfern.

For about 15 years, Evelyn Hartogh has been pulling on the iconic bulletproof bracelets … of her alter ego, the feminist superhero Wonder Woman.

… the Amazonian princess was the perfect fit for the performance artist’s humanist ideals.

Photographed by Alicia Lane, 2006.

But behind the comedic performances and the bright red boots, Hartogh’s affinity with Wonder Woman has taken an ironic twist.

“Everyone has to put on a strong face to the world and everyone has their own problems,” she says. “That’s maybe why Wonder Woman is so appealing, because we all feel the pressure to be more than we really are.”

(Redfern, Graham. “Fighting Personal Demons: Interview.” 5 Dec 2007. The Courier Mail. via Evelyn Hartogh‘s official website.)

“Mopping Bartleme Galleries” by Ian Wadley, 1993.

Extremely positive thing that I can admit I dig about Wonder Woman: her iconism — ladies like her and want to be her. I can appreciate that because I support anything that makes women want to stand up for themselves and acknowledge their potential might instead of being self-critical and predictably needy.

Added insight from Ms. Hartogh: ladies understand the tremendous pressure Wonder Woman is under to achieve and to be the topmost and the Bestest in the Westest because they themselves are trying constantly to score Outstanding in every category while juggling all their responsibilities; they recognize that she, like them, is a champion with a plight.

Photographed by Alicia Lane, 2005.

Taking it one step further: when we read Wonder Woman and all the odds are against her but she pulls it out of the bag at the end because, hello, she is Wonder Woman — we can reassure ourselves that we, too, will pull it out of the bag at the end, because, hello, we are wonderful.

I can totally hang with that.

Please do check out Ms. Hartogh’s official website, hit her up on the myspace (from whence most of these pictures hail), and take her live performance videos on the youtube for a spin. She is thought-provoking, playful, deep and awesome!

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: What life will you choose?

Tartu, Estonia.

Last night I was hitting up the facebook to see if my friend’s breeched baby had turned yet (yes) and, at the top of my feed, another friend had just posted this great quote from David Whyte: “Anything or anyone that doesn’t bring you alive is too small for you.” It was really perfect timing because I’d been letting a number of things grind me down and boss me around rather than keep to the task of optimistically trying to stay in charge of my own life.

As far as destiny goes, I don’t know if the wizard or the goose is the better choice, but what is most important and uplifting, and what I will try to remember with the best hope, is that I have a choice.

Burroughs Month and Movie Millisecond: Respect silence

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michael Gondry, 2004.)

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

(William S. Burroughs qtd. in Odier, Daniel. The Job: Interviews With William S. Burroughs. (Paris: Editions Pierre Belfond. 1969). Print.)

I really can’t stand it when people pester me about communication. It’s insecure and suggests that I’m some wild, changeable, untrustworthy person who the other party may turn to find is plotting some mutiny behind their back or necking with the bartender while their car is being stolen. I wish it could just be assumed that I am a solid human and that if I had anything new to report, I would. It’s so disrespectful to be unceasingly pressuring people to talk if they don’t feel like it or have requested time to think: the kind of person who fears silence, as Mr. Burroughs points out, is a self-involved control freak who is only waiting for their turn to start nattering on about their own problems again.

“What are you thinking? You’re so quiet.” Aren’t you thinking about me? I want to be talking. It tells me that the other person doesn’t give a shit about what I’m actually like, and I am just another in a long line of replaceable intimate nobodies to whom they confess everything, manipulate endlessly, and discard for someone more dramatic when they are bored of baring their soul to me. Like, screw that, you know? Thank god my friends get it and are like that themselves: we respect each other’s silences and alone times, and come together with love and boisterous support when the time is right, not when we demand it to be so. So much better. Why can’t we just marry our friends and family?

Daily Batman: Art of the cover

1927 Life magazine cover by Cole Phillips, via She blogged by night.

Special thanks to fantastic and talented Mr. Joe Chapman for the link.

Take-Two Tuesday — Model Citizens and Movie Moment: A case of the Mondays cured

This post originally appeared on November 16, 2009 at 2:14 pm.

Got a case of the Mondays? Not me, because I pretty much do whatever I want, whenever I want. But in case you have somehow been enslaved by the System and are sneaking peeks from beneath fluorescent lights in some dreadful cubicle, here’s some Office Space quotes to snap you out of it, and some naked models too. You’re welcome!

Doutzen Kroes and Raquel Zimmerman, “Working Girls,” by Mario Testino for V magazine, Spring 2007.

Peter Gibbons: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.
Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Dr. Swanson: Wow, that’s messed up.

Peter Gibbons: I don’t like my job, and I don’t think I’m going to go anymore.
Joanna: You’re just not going to go?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Joanna: Won’t you get fired?
Peter Gibbons: I don’t know, but I really don’t like it. And I’m not going to go.
Joanna: So you’re going to quit?
Peter Gibbons: Nooo. Not really. Uh… I’m just gonna stop going.
Joanna: Well, what are you going to do about money and bills and…
Peter Gibbons: You know, I’ve never really liked paying bills. I don’t think I’m going to do that, either.

Peter Gibbons: It’s not just about me and my dream of doing nothing. It’s about all of us. I don’t know what happened to me at that hypnotherapist and, I don’t know, maybe it was just shock and it’s wearing off now, but when I saw that fat man keel over and die – Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.
Michael Bolton: I told those fudge-packers I liked Michael Bolton’s music.
Peter Gibbons: Oh. That is not right, Michael.

Peter Gibbons: Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday and you’re not feeling real well, does anyone ever say to you, “Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays”?
Lawrence: No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin’ something like that, man.

Fuckin’…A.

Photograph by Ellen von Unwerth

Look. I understand financial obligations and suchlike, but please be sure to draw lines in the dirt declaring how much you let the world and its ways infringe on your personal happiness, and ask yourself what you would pay to be happier; if the amount is the difference between the wage you make at the miserable job you have and a lower-paying job that you would better enjoy, then jump!

And don’t forget to refuse to be normal at all times. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, chickpeas. Quit your job and go on tour.

edit: What I like about Flashback Friday and Take-Two Tuesday is that it gives me a chance to take a recent-reflective turn in this business of self-audit. This was written nearly a year ago. Do I still “pretty much do whatever I want, whenever I want?” Not really, but not in a depressing way and certainly when I do it is not in a rude or irresponsible way — but, examining that period carefully, I didn’t really much then either. Anyway I despised that job (professional plagiarism: I hated almost everything about it) and it tarred my soul. Substituting when I can and caring for my grandmother is infinitely more satisfying, fulfilling, and uplifting. And I am doing what I want, I think perhaps much better now than then. I like it.