Will Rawls: Boi

This project will examine the virile kouroi statues of Greek antiquity and build a counter-narrative about male identity formed through neo-mythology, dance and queer desire. Looking to the erotic melodrama and body horror that are foundational to Greek myth, Boi will result in a film that traces the main character's awakening desire for and entanglement with the figures and imaginary beasts of the region. The representation of flesh in various states of animation and transformation will inform choreography that explores how dance is a fundamental engine for rescripting the body. Part of the research for this counter-narrative will look into representations of black people (African figures) in other works of Greek antiquity such as the Kantharos Cup. Some of the regions that may figure into the film are Boeotia, Attica, Paros, Naxos, Samos, Lesvos and Gavdos.

“Chafed and morphed from the surgeries of time, the kouroi were sexy survivors, and became my first gay porn in a pre-Internet age. I’d savor the stiff gesticulations of my naked Greeks while shuffling them among mental snapshots of my shirtless classmates drenched in Drakkar Noir before our high school dances.”

As a choreographer, I am invested in questions of embodiment, flesh, sensation, tactility, and an experience of art that is extra-visual. To this end, I organized a field trip to The Tactual Museum of Athens, which is one of only five museums in the world designed for the blind and visually impaired. It offers the chance to “all visually impaired and sighted visitors…to approach Cultural Heritage and Art through the sense of touch”. While there, AiR colleagues and I took a blindfolded, hands-on tour of their collection of copies of important Greek sculptures, including a kouros. This trip was meant to shift art history into a hyper-present, sensorial register. It was also a way to test out whatever kind of touch was inspired by these conventionally untouchable, and thereby haptically intriguing, figures.

Additional research paths for “Boi” are racial erasure in archeological practice, the repatriation of artifacts, and the history and science of the archeological “copy”. This auxiliary research took me to The Museum of Classical Archeology at Cambridge University, England, which maintains an historic collection of plaster copies of canonic Greek sculptures. Some of these copies are antiques themselves, dating to 19th century English archeological expeditions into the Mediterranean. I met with chief curator Susanne Turner to visit their collection and learn some of the identifying features of the kouroi such as remnants of paint, hair styles, enigmatic smiles, garments and stride, as well as the functions of kouroi at temples and gravesites. We also discussed the value of the copy as a placeholder for original sculptures that have been damaged due to exposure in nature or due to modern warfare. The MCA also carries plaster copies of Roman copies of Greek sculptures. The industry of these “nesting copies” prompted questions about the gradual stylistic drift from an “original” and the potential of the “bad copy” as a site of transgression from normative representations of the masculine form.

After Cambridge, I visited the Tate Britain to see Sir Isaac Julien’s retrospective exhibition, “What Freedom Is To Me”. Among several other works, The Tate presented his 2022 multi-channel video installation, “Once Again… (Statues Never Die)”, which explores political philosopher “Alain Locke’s engagement with the Barnes collection [Philadelphia, PA, USA], …while inviting critical conversations around the African material culture that influenced the Black cultural movement” (https://www.isaacjulien.com/projects/40/). Julien’s footage was partially shot in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where a black male model poses semi-nude in a drawing class, surrounded by copies of Greek antiquities. The model is inspected at close range by various visitors to the studio while a counternarrative of art and desire unfolds in voiceover. Julien “continues his exploration of the queer subculture of the Harlem Renaissance in his reflection on the relationship between Locke and sculptor Richmond Barthé…” (ibid). The beaux-arts milieu of Julien’s studio frames well the racialized, “nesting intimacies” among artist, model, studio copy and filmmaker, providing a useful comparative lens for my inquiry.

Although Julien’s plotlines differ from mine, I hope to use the kouros as a similar fulcrum for queer excavations of raced and gendered iconography. I see further opportunities here to probe the kinks and frustrations of black embodiment in dialogue with these anatomically fragmented, white figures. The kouroi are usually missing body parts, and appear dismembered, which adds a morbid accent to their sexiness. I’ve been consulting “Exposed”, in which Caroline Vout provides examples of visceral, abject representations of the body in ancient Greek imagery. This morbid dialogue between body and sculpture is further reinforced by the role of the kouroi as votives or memorials in temples and tombs. This ambivalent function lends the kouroi a mystique of worship and mourning, which I find compelling, and potentially funny, as an erotic premise. Lastly, I am revisiting various trans-species encounters from Greek mythology; these metamorphic tales offer potential plot twists for the film’s narrative. Overall, these two museum trips further confirmed for me the racial and national fantasies that pervade the reproduction of Greek antiquity within European and North American art circles.

To finish this summary, an edited excerpt from my reading at the Onassis AiR Open Day #7 on June 30, 2023:

“I suppose British archeologists assumed that Greek sculptures are better preserved in climate control until the world ends from climate change. I suppose we are all more partial to our own timelines than those of others. Whatever happens to a sculpture when it is exposed to the sun and rain, nude or naked, is linked to a kind of cultural agency. The same goes for our actual bodies… I suppose it’s true that even though we want to survive, we know we won’t, and so we also want to fall apart in whatever way we wish, to let ourselves be exposed to the elements. I suppose at times we prefer decay to another’s archeological intentions. Beyond the pursuit of knowledge, I suppose archaeology is related to depression – or melancholy – or a morbid obsession with digging for what it looks like to fall apart and disappear for what might be forever…and then be anxiously resurrected and copied.”

– excerpt from my notebook