Media Edit by Cathead Reynolds
“I defy any lover of painting to love a picture as a fetishist loves a shoe”-Georges Bataille
Fetish came to me naturally. I wore my mom’s lingerie as a child. I still remember the dresser the nylons and lingerie were piled up in. I remember being excited when my parents weren't home because I had the freedom to “dress up”. I once as a child selling magazine subscriptions saw a woman in a short skirt, nylons and heels. I walked around the block just to see her again (twice).
This ties into art in so many ways that I get a little confused on where to start. A fetish is just a human made object, which could be transposed as a definition of art rather easily. Secondly, it’s simply an object that is revered as sacred or desirable in some way. I have always seen the act of making art and doing magick to be one and the same, this seems to agree with the fact that the first cave paintings are often called fetishes.
Cat Army has always had a fetish element. Cat ears can be found in any sex shop and are often used in pet-play. Some of the earliest Cat Army Facebook imagery was from a Masonic Lodge full of Thelemites taking turns wearing a pair of Cat Ears that I had just purchased at such a shop on the way there. This element is not enforced and you can also see these ears at many random stores in the mall. This is multifaceted, as it was also a replacement of the Bowler Hats used to represent Fluxus artists, which Cat Army was inspired by, but didn’t want to be tied to.
The pet-play obsession for me is both personal, and also a way to ask others to relate with animals. This started with cats (one of the most relatable animals as they are most often found in our homes.) But Cat Army is not solely about Cats. Cats can be seen as the door that leads to everything else in Cat Army.
Marx’s definition of fetish is, “the action of worshiping an inanimate object for it’s supposed magical powers”. Capitalism is a fetish producing machine with it’s products imbuing consumers with all manner of powers including status. The surrealists mocked this system not by ignoring it, but by expanding upon it. In Picabia’s “Girl Born without a Mother” we see the “patriarchal fantasy” as Hal Foster puts it, “of technological creation outside the mother”..”expressed to be mocked not embraced”. This is a common theme among Surrealists most obviously Hans Bellmer with his Dolls, Rope, and Heels. Fetish has a complicated relationship with political dialogue. Situationist thought sees the spectacle of media images as stealing our present, and selling us our reality as a deferred future. This was a major influence on Punk fashion, which used fetish much like the surrealists - as a way to reveal the nature of society, and possibly be more authentic as response to it. Fetish also ties into Stiletto Feminism that sees the use of fetish as something to return the power of the object to women and empower them. In a society that negates the voice of women specifically, this empowering quality may be a valuable tool. To get a sense of this power here is Freud’s definition of Fetish: “the act of giving an excessive and irrational commitment to something or someone”. For this reason, I use fetish in much of the Cat Army propaganda, often juxtaposed with environmental and political imagery. In a world where almost no concern is given to the environment, or humanity itself, a little bit of “irrational commitment” may be just the thing we need.
Written by Cathead Reynolds on July 8 2020
Selected works relating to Fetish posted in Catarmy:
This peice by Luc Fierens powerfuly justaposes the world crisis with this erotic image.
Image of the painter Leonor Fini posted to Catarmy by Luc Fierens
Great Vispo peice posted by John McConnochie
A brilliant digital collage by Mick Boyle
Ray Craig incorporated the Cat And Bee themes here perfectly.
This Visual Poem just posted by a founding member of Catarmy Michael Orr that combines life and machine is reminiscent of Picabia and Breton.
Gif art made by me with Second Life Art by Andrew Oleksiuk.
Digital Collage made by me for Luc Fierens after he posted this college with images realting to the current world crisis and including eroticism to CatArmy.
Another Gif Art collaboration I did with Luc Fierens
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