So this is what trust looks like.
Funny, my first thought was “So this is what the patriarchy looks like.”
Yup. This is how women are supposed to trust men. With their lives.
Woman : “Hey, can we just… Drop the bow?” Man : “WHY DON’T YOU TRUST ME I’M NOT A VIOLENT GUY, YOU ARE INSULTING ME THINKING I WILL HURT YOU!!!” Woman : “No it’s just… Well I’m afraid.” Man : “But why? Look at me, I’m not afraid. And we’re equal, look, we pull the bow together.” Woman : “I think we’re not equal, you can kill me with the arrow and I can’t.” Man : “What? So you would like to be able to kill me? You’re so agressive!” Woman : “That’s not what I mean, we were talking about equality : you can hurt me, I can’t.” Man : “Of course you can. You can hit me with the bow if you want.” Woman : “That’s not the same thing, it will never kill you.” Man : “Oh, you always complaining, stop victimising yourself! Do I talk about the difficulty of holding the arrow? Of the responsibility it giving to me?” […] Etc, etc. Every debates about gender equality, ladies and gentleman.
omg the comments. Brilliant.
Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Rest Energy, 1980
this was an art piece by Maria and Ulay (one of the most famous art couples like ever) illustrating trust in relationships. ya’ll need to calm the fuck down. “It’s like being in love: giving somebody the power to hurt you and trusting (or hoping) they won’t.” - Maria Abramović
Hold the fuck up everyone, the artist said (amongst many things) that it’s about love so don’t you dare interpret it any other way or find other relevance or resonances and don’t you dare be aware of the fact that it’s the woman who will be shot through the heart if this fails how could that possibly be relevant to interpreting it jegus don’t you know anything, also the author is not dead the author is alive and well and the only important thing is authorial intention. And there is only one correct way to interpret a piece of art. I mean it’s not like the artists could have found a different way to represent a relationship where both people are equally likely to be hurt by the fall out. This was literally the only thing they could have done so the monodirectional risk is just irrelevant okay? The end.
I’ve not read anything by Abramovic stating that there was no feminist element to the work, but who cares about that, right? All works must be considered free from feminism unless the artist explicitly specifies otherwise.
I mean it’s not like an intrinsic part of the piece really really painfully obviously highlights how much we put at risk by trusting people sometimes. It’s like, it’s all about how wonderful trust is, but ignoring that an intrinsic part of trust and why it matters at all is that you can be hurt by it?
HOW DARE PEOPLE DISCUSS ART. STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. THATS NOT WHAT ITS FOR.
(The art piece is called ‘Rest Energy’)