The art of Pleasure

Out of The Strong, Came Forth Sweetness – GHN30 was an exhibition curated by Brian Teeling and Aisling Clark to mark the 30th anniversary of Ireland’s Gay Health Network. Ahead of the opening, contributing artists, Karen Donnellan and Bill Harris, interviewed each other about their respective practices. Photos by Dean O’Sullivan and Evanna Devine.

Artists — Exhibition — GHN

There’s no point in any activism where there isn’t a kernel of that joy within it.

Karen Donnellan exhibited two works, ‘Silent Amplifiers (Mutual Dreaming)’ and ‘Liquifying on Venus or Thecla’s Font’, while Bill Harris was commissioned to make a new piece, ‘you & us’. All three were on display in the Naughton Institute from May 12 to 26, alongside contributions from dozens of other LGBTQ+ artists. Mixing historical and contemporary works, the exhibition reflected on the grief, joy, resilience, urgency and expanse of the LGBTQ+ experience in Ireland across time and space. The following is an excerpt of the artiston-artist conversation between Karen and Bill.

Karen Donnellan: Ok, talk to me about pleasure!

Bill Harris: I was actually going to ask you first off about pleasure activism, so this is great! Pleasure, where to begin?

I suppose I’m going to bring it back a bit to when I started making art first and started making performances. My work is very political, it’s always been interested in political things, but I’ve always kind of reenacted those political systems or those practices that were harmful either on myself or on something else to try make a point. I did a few performances that were good, but they were also a bit scary. I just kind of took it to a place where I wasn’t really getting any sense of resolution from it, or didn’t feel like anything was actually being resolved.

Then I started to do work that was more about, quote unquote, solving things or trying to come up with playful solutions to things. I think that was my route towards pleasure.

I did a work a couple of years ago called ‘Pleaser’, which was about pleasure, but it was a choose your own adventure audio-based game that moved you around Dublin. And for that, I was looking at the city in general and urban planning and just how it’s gotten the shape that it is. I was thinking about pleasure and the different types of pleasure that there are. Within stoicism, they’re very like, “Disregard all pleasures of the body because pleasures of the mind are of the utmost importance.” And I think it was maybe Plato, sounds a bit cliché, who wrote that there are three types of pleasures: effective, corporal and external. And I was like, “Right ok, what are externals? In a city like this, it’s financial.” So then my three types of pleasures that I started exploring were: pleasures of the body, pleasures of the mind and pleasures of finance. So that’s been my first real approach to pleasure as an idea.

But since then, I’ve started to notice that I’m seeking pleasure in my practice as a DJ or in organising events, because that’s why we do it. I’m also now seeking pleasure with a lot of the artworks that I make because mutual pleasure and mutual aid go hand in hand to me. So I think that’s how I started going down that route.

What about you? Talk to me about pleasure activism.

Karen: My work was always about pleasure—I mean, I’m an energy healer as well, so the healing element was always important, and I think at a point somewhere, probably around 2018/2019, it felt like all the artists around me were making work that was directly and literally capital 'A' Activism. And my work is too, but it’s a pivot, and it’s more focused on the joy and the liberation that we’re seeking. There’s no point in any activism where there isn’t a kernel of that joy within it, hello, Audre Lorde’s essay ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’.

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown, that book gave me so much permission. I mean, it’s about sex, orgasms—there’s a chapter on nipple orgasms and sex after cancer, sex after menopause—and that made me go, “Oh my God! This is where my work is operating.”

I actually met Adrienne; she was at Connolly Books last year, and I barely remember anything she said to me because I was just starstruck, but she signed my books.

Also, sorry, this is storytime, but a few years ago I was on a date in New York, and I was reading it at the time and had it in my bag. It turned out that this girl I was on the date with is a good friend of Adrienne’s, and so she sent a picture of me with the book, like a really dorky picture, to Adrienne. So anyway, Adrienne totally got me laid!

Bill: I must carry around this book!

Karen: You should! The cover is a bunch of animals having sex.

Bill: Love. So good. A book I’ve actually been reading for the work I’m making for this show is Unlimited Intimacy by Tim Dean. A lot of it talks about the different kinds of breeding cultures/bug chasing cultures that are within the queer, specifically gay men, scene. It is a very interesting field because of this whole sense of kinship around transmitting different STIs or viruses between each other, but how it’s framed through pleasure. I just find that a really nice and interesting lens to approach this mad subculture.

But I love what you said about permission when it came to pleasure.

Karen: Yeah, I actually said that to Adrienne. I was like, “The book gave me so much permission.” And she was like, “It gave me so much permission writing it!”

Bill: I’ve gotten that from a few books at times, especially The Ethical Slut and other ones like that that really put a language to what you’re trying to get at.

Karen: Yeah, it made me realise the importance of that work. Of joy and magic and love.

So tell us about the work you’re showing in the Out of The Strong, Came Forth Sweetness exhibition.

Bill: So the work I'm showing is, to me, it's resolving something that I've been wanting to do for a while. I started working with kombucha, specifically kombucha and brewing kombucha, when I was making more ecologically concerned art or like directly ecological art. I kind of went away from it a bit and then when I was doing the ‘Pleaser’ work, I had a lot of dried scoby material in it that I was using as fabric and as paper. I was trying to get at this idea of, you know if you’re in a game or if, say, you’re on a cliff walk, and you see a little sign that has like three dots at a turn maybe, and you know that this is a kind of visual language that you’re meant to follow and understand. I’ve been wanting to get at that with this kind of material.

But this work specifically is going to be a sex sling that’s made from dried scoby material, but the scoby is grown with J-Lube, which is a lube that’s traditionally used within fisting communities. It’s this sort of lube that apparently you’re not meant to leave out because bacteria loves it because it has starch in it and bacteria loves to eat starch. I just had this idea of mixing the two of them because the object in the end is gonna be quite a sexual thing, and J-Lube is obviously a very sexual thing (if you’re not a vet, because then you just use it for your profession.)

Tell me about the work that you’re doing.

Karen: I’ve two pieces, they’re from 2019, but they’ve only ever been shown in New York. So ‘Silent Amplifiers (Mutual Dreaming)’ are two big iridescent blown glass amplifiers with carved selenite at the core, and we’ll see how the light falls, but when I showed them in New York, they reflected three iridescent yonis on the floor. I didn’t plan that, but on a subconscious level, I think I knew.

And then there’s this marble piece, ‘Liquifying on Venus or Thecla’s Font’, it’s a big chunk of gorgeous white marble that I carved in Vermont with an oversized iridescent glass bubble sitting in the centre. It looks like a queer/moist baptismal font. I love iridescence because, rainbows, but it also reminds me of dichroic glass that was developed by NASA for the space helmets to protect astronauts’ eyes. At the same time, ancient glass also has this effect on the surface, so it’s sort of beyond time to me.

And by chance, this weekend I found Contact by Carl Sagan, it’s amazing. Anyway, I was just flipping through it and realised this is where the title, “Liquifying on Venus” came from, which also just feels unspeakably horny to me.

Bill: One other thing that I saw on your website that I quite liked was the idea of calling in futures. I don’t think you used the word ‘speculate’, but kind of speculating on what could be, and this willingness to imagine what could be, which I feel like a lot of people don’t do, but it is something that people are paying more attention to now, which is nice.

Karen: Yeah, and it’s so necessary. We have to imagine it. We’re living in a world that someone else imagined.

Bill: Yeah, that’s literally where my entire practice comes from. That realisation.

Karen: Nothing comes into being without being imagined first. Anything that was ever made was a thought, an idea that was channelled first. It was abstract to begin with, everything that has ever existed. So it makes sense that when we are trying to call in a better reality, where everyone’s taken care of and fully resourced and loved for who they are, we have to f *cking imagine it and ask for what we want and then make it happen! Because when you talk to people, everyone else wants that too.

Bill: I think that’s how I’ve come to have this practice of also organising parties and hosting these spaces for people to come into, which is called Tender. A lot of my practice comes from that idea of all of this as a kind of pre-existing and pre-invented world. I can either accept that and buy into it and tow the line, or else I can actually be like, “No, this is wrong. You need to do something else.” Which is a nice position to be immediately forced into as a queer person, because you kind of grow up thinking that.

Karen: Yeah, unplugging from what we don’t want and creating something new. Also, I’m helping set up a Queer Shed in Sligo!

Bill: Oh, no way!

Karen: Yeah, and I’m just thinking about how our practices are rolling and evolving, and I think it’s inevitable when you’re doing what we’re doing that it shifts into 3D things that are helping and community-oriented.

Bill: Literal community building that isn’t something that’s more metaphysical, it’s actually a physical thing that you go do. You go to the Queer Shed or you go to the party and you build that community for yourself.

Karen: Yep! And I’m so glad we’re here. I’m glad we’re at this point. I’m glad we’re able to spend more time imagining and creating. From one perspective, when I think about the AIDS crisis, there are different kinds of urgencies now, but at least we have the space and we’re being given the space to imagine and play and have that freedom and creativity.

I’m such a futurist in a way, and I think about language and queer language as Gaeilge. I work with Meitheal Téarmaíochta where we’re actually translating queer language for focloir.ie and teanglann.ie. So like, ‘celesbian’, I have ideas for it! And ‘lavender menace’ and ‘gay panic’ will be on focloir.ie if I have anything to do with it, and I do! So those kinds of things feel really exciting and positive.

Bill: I really like that idea of taking the Irish language and bringing the words that we use on a daily basis, like ‘gay panic’, into it again. It’s kind of resolidifying ourselves within this story and creating the narrative going forward. Which is nice because narratives are good and it’s good to have them to look back on, but you also need to use them to build future ones that you can go with and create that kind of world that you want to live in, especially now.

To find out more about Gay Health Network and the Out of The Strong, Came Forth Sweetness – GHN30 exhibition, visit gayhealthnetwork.ie. For more of Karen Donnellan’s and Bill Harris’ work, check out karendonnellan.com and @bullharris on Instagram.