monster season

We are drowning in the back of the circ area with the amazing art dropped off for the Beautiful Monstrosities exhibit and I am super excited to get it on the walls tomorrow.  We were semi-inspired by our visit to the DePaul Pop Culture conference in the spring devoted to slasher films to do something with horror this fall (especially since we put off our mass delusions and illusions topic for spring.)  I will also be throwing in my contribution--some spreads of the /SLASH/ zine from last winter, both the text and the images (see above).  Over the course of the month we have some cool things coming up in conjunction with the exhibit, including a mask-making workshop, a film trivia night, a round table discussion, and our Halloween Public Domainia.

I was charged with coming up with some of the panel questions for Thursday night and got to thinking about the idea of monstrous women and the current political climate and how montrosity can work as social commentary--I immediately think of something like Wasp Woman--the woman so vain and afraid of ageing that she transforms into a monster.Or something like American Mary, her patients,  where the surgeries and body mods essentially make women into monstrocities. Or plastic surgery gone awry.  At what point does the beautiful become the monstrous. (which really makes me want to cut up fashion magazines and make monster collages, which I totally might do.)  It's far down the pipeline and I've only worked at researching it, but the Renaissance Dog girl poems I want to write eventually, and how they tie into this idea are interesting as well. Probably something I touched on a little in girl show, but something that could be explored a little more in the future.