The Lobsta Pussy Summit
Go! Push Pops interview Rebecca Goyette aka LobstaGirl
Cristal: Hi Lobsta Girl
LobstaGirl: Hello Lobsta Bitches
Diamond: Welcome to the feminist sex summit!
LobstaGirl: Sex positive
Diamond: Queer
Cristal: Androgynous
Diamond: LobstaSex Summit
LobstaGirl: It’s all Good. So we all have this tendency to sort of mix art and life a little bit, right? Perform and kind of get people involved in our performances right and sometimes we can get little crushes on them… sometimes it’s a little different kind of attraction, right? You might not necessarily want to do anything else with them but then sometimes there are people that you want to have both with, right?
Cristal: Well you can certainly learn a great deal, it can enrich your art practice and also it’s honest – it’s what comes from a very daily relationship with the people you are performing with.
Diamond: It has a therapeutic value. It’s like a ritual. Interacting in a freeform way with other people… wait what is performance art? I don’t know that I’m am necessarily interested in identifying the “trends” of performance art. I know what we’re doing and some of our friends and I know that performance art is popular but what the fuck is going on?
LobstaGirl: I don’t get a chance to go see that much of it either. I do see some but I’m not like seeking it out. In terms of my own work if I try to just keep it to the videos it’s no good. It’s like I need that live experience because I’m getting energy from the audience. It pushes me to react very quickly to whatever is going on around me. In a video that’s also true but it’s sort of like you’re performing for the technology, that becomes built into the work. I spend like 2 or 3 months preparing before I do a video shoot. Sometimes the people are coming in for a fitting and what not. Some people don’t like that. It’s not always true but the tendency has been more of my female performers have come in for fittings. I think as women we want the clothes to fit our bodies a certain way, we want them to amplify our bodies. I don’t want to take up too much of their time but then I’ve noticed that some people just want to delve in more.
Cristal: And you don’t just want to tell them what to do because then you don’t learn from the collaboration. What they bring is their own and it definitely helps you to transform your work and move forward.
LobstaGirl: I might get interested in a person to work with and sometimes they do shape their own character. I start to mold and shape my idea towards the conversations we have had. I try to have an overall structure that’s pretty sound that I’m developing over a period of months and then I’m allowing for a lot of chance and a lot of input throughout that process. I just wrote a script for a project that I’m going to shoot this summer and I’ve really had to see what part of that script, the plan rather (it’s not a script with dialogue and I will be very improvisational) was going on in my head. It’s a story around an asexual romance. All of the sexuality is happening within those people as flashbacks, dreams and imagination. Every time that they see each other one of those things gets triggered in their mind. It will involve a lot of fading into dreamy sequences. I’m using my own real memories, fantasies and flashbacks. What’s interesting is I have a male lead I’m basing on a real person and a real relationship in my life and so my relationship to that character keeps changing. Life keeps changing and you learn different things about what it is that’s concerning you in a relationship. Like what was bothering me was having a feeling of romance that was asexual… and yet it’s become very romantic and intimate now too. It has brought a lot of things up in my mind that might not have come up otherwise. The whole other series has been like lobsta pornos and it’s very sexualized and this one will have a lot of sexualized moments but it’s sort of dealing more deeply with sexuality and how it operates in your mind and how certain things can get triggered.
Cristal: It’s almost like a shift for you – approaching your work from a totally different place. It might be interesting for viewers that are familiar to your work. It’s also so relevant to our times when everything is so sexualized.
LobstaGirl: In this piece one of the flashbacks is when I was twelve I was molested by a cop. He chased me down into the basement. We were having a pool party and my mom was in charge of the ambulance service for the town so they had a lot of friends that were cops and fireman and ambulance people. He was over at the house and he chased me down to the basement and he straddled me and started tickling me. I was so ticklish that I started bashing my own head on the ground really hard because I didn’t want to be tickled. Then he took a Poppa Smurf doll and he shoved it into my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. I can’t recall everything after that and I always wondered how much more happened. That’s going to be one of the scenes that I’m delving into. What’s interesting is that when I have a high level of trust with somebody who I’m role playing around with in my artwork or in terms of sex I like to be a little submissive. I like to have that kind of play going on in sex. I think that for a lot of people there are connections between weird past memories. It’s about wanting to explore my own psychology and other people’s psychology through situations both real and imagined. I often find when people are confronted with sexual images some people are shut down to it. There’s been people who have not wanted to deal with my work or who have been threatened by it or who have laughed it off. You know they want to put it in a box somehow and put it away because they don’t want to deal with it. For this piece that I’m working on it’s very important for me that I just try to deal with these complexities. I’m not really just a comedian and I never have been. Some people read my work in a comedic way but there’s a lot of layers in there and there always have been. I’m just trying to make that more implicit in my work so that it’s not being overlooked in a way. Even if people don’t want to look at it or don’t want to deal with the things I’m bringing up I would prefer to have that distaste in my work be kind of serious. I always wanted to be really positive and I think that’s where comedy has entered into my work. I wanted it to feel light enough that people could enter the work. I don’t think this new work will be too dark for people to handle although there will be a little more darkness to it and there will also be a little more romance to it. It will also talk more about disconnect – our connection and our disconnect. Let’s call it more like unrequited love and sort of…
Diamond: It’s super mental!
LobstaGirl: It’s super mental.
Diamond: It’s obsessive-compulsive, I mean that’s what I do. Let’s start thinking about those weird tics in the context of queer too or non-normative practices within the context of performance art and life. We’re exploding the whole definition of queer for instance when you bring up like Lobstasex…
LobstaGirl: I read an article today that was really interesting about a movement to stop identifying s&m as a kind of pathology. What was ironic was that the article was written by a sex therapist who helps people with sex addiction. Working with all of her clients she came to accept different meanings of what s&m could be. I have started thinking a lot about this idea of surrender. Like in yoga you’re surrendering to your body you’re breathing into your pain or center, right? I feel like sometimes in particularly awesome sex situations you have that same feeling of surrender.
Diamond: It’s a release.
LobstaGirl: This person is physically dominating me a bit and I don’t have the control of the situation. I like it when I know we’re playing around I don’t like it when a person is just taking me for granted. You play that game and I love that feeling. The article is saying basically we’re in this society which is all about control and a lot of people are into being submissive. The highest level of submissives are usually high-powered business people – very smart, very intelligent people. They have to keep it together in their lives and they want to have a different feeling for a second, they want to surrender. If you are a leader you can’t surrender. I can’t even learn if I don’t think the teacher is smart in a yoga class, I will leave. I have to be able to respect the teacher to even surrender to them. I just look at these things as being rather connected and if you break things down that way we all have much more in common than people want to think. One of the reasons why I identify with being queer is I know one thing – I’m not normative. The pressure to be normative as a female is vast. I’m a really good person. I’m a really highly spiritual person, but you know I’m multidimensional and I don’t want to be put in a really limited position. I don’t really even want to be with one person. I really feel more polyamorous in spirit. I don’t want to have a family and a lifestyle that is normative. I don’t want to participate in that. I am really just all about more forms of openness because we can get really shut down as adults and loose a sense of play. I feel sexuality is a huge playground. So many ideas and so much creativity can be generated from ideas surrounding sex, for me it’s a hugely fertile ground and a positive life generating experience. Negative things can happen in that space but it’s meant to be enjoyed.
Diamond: Recently at NYU in the performance studies dept. they had a panel featuring performances artists whose work has been censored including Karen Finely, Ann Liv Young and Tobaron Waxman. What emerged in the dialogue was essentially that within the U.S. the issue with censorship is always sex whereas in Europe and anywhere else in the world it’s a political thing. You can say whatever you want here. You can say “kill the president” but if you show underwear, if you show pubic hair – all these mundane things really push people’s hot buttons in terms of public performance art, particularly when it is being publicly funded. Karen Finely spoke and said when she came under public scrutiny and censorship due to her NEA Grant it ruined her life. The Whitney cancelled her show without apology because they were afraid of the government coming down on them. She was considered a sexual deviant for spreading food on her naked body, it wasn’t even that crazy – not for today’s world. But at that time in the 90s it became really hard for her to find work, her whole livelihood was threatened.
Cristal: It just seems so absurd here in American, which is like the most sexualized culture.
LobstaGirl: Like Lady Gaga being all sexualized is okay because it’s celebrity culture. At that level of commerce sexuality is so mainstreamed and money driven. Case in point I was performing as a “Missile Dick Chick” back in the Bush years one day in Times Square. Every week we would say “Thursday night Times Square be there if you can.” We would rehearse live, just show up wherever. Just three of us were performing that night and there were these people shooting an underwear commercial nearby. They were like totally half naked models and we were getting pushed out because there was a lot of money going into that shoot. There was nothing wrong with being half naked it was that we were wearing 2.5 foot-long strap on missiles and huge red and white war chests. I mean it was obvious that it was like this cross-over but like a lot of times we had the feeling that it was because we were chicks with dicks. The rest of our costume if people saw us from the waist up even the cops they wanted pictures with us, they would hug us and then they would look down and be like WHOA! That’s very interesting to me like very femme up top and then you know we had the dick so … you know? At the same time I feel like today I’m more interested in taunting the art world. I see the art world as very conservative and feel it’s the place I need to be. Another time I was working with a man in one of my videos who was a little more indie-oriented. He was really game to do whatever and I made him one of my costumes. I only told him that he might be the Marquis de Sade and then when he got to the set I had made these giant cheetah print dicks. There was a space inside the dick that I put spray can whip cream so he could like spray us down with the whip cream. I gave him a whole arsenal of things that he could kind of like torture us with. He really loved wearing that costume although I went through some reluctance with him too because he kept wanting to show the video in less formal situations. I wanted to really focus on showing it in more formal situations because I feel like if I were to show that video at a party it could just seem like entertainment. I didn’t feel like it was made for entertainment. We were performing an orgy. Irvin Morazan had 8 dicks. We all had these crazy costumes. I think people think they have one sexual persona and then something else happens on camera. If they’re very confident – bravado totally comes across. It’s almost like a first date in a way you see your own limitations you see their limitations and you also see what can open up. It’s been interesting to maintain different friendships with the people who’ve been in my pieces, I’m sure you guy share that too…
Cristal: Definitely – you get to meet each other in a different way and then it’s kind of something special you carry on your relationship with them and it’s very rich for both parties.
LobstaGirl: I could never just sit in my studio again.
Cristal: It’s definitely something that activates the work in a different way. The two need not be exclusive, both things feed each other.
LobstaGirl: One time someone said “Oh I’ll be in your lobsta porn but I’m not wearing not just 2 dicks I want 4 and one long enough to strangle you with.” So I starting making that thing for him. The costumes you two are wearing they were for my Lobsta doulas. They helped assist Lobsta Pussy when I gave birth to my Lobsta baby. This one was Collette’s lingerie that I changed into her costume and that one I made from scratch. Those ladies were totally invested they studied how to be doulas and they brought their vibrator and they gave me orgasmic birth in the butter bath. They were fucking righteous bisexual women in their twenties, I love that. It took me forever to figure shit out in my twenties, I was just experimenting with all kinds of shit and not really knowing where I was going with it.
Diamond: Creatively?
LobstaGirl: Sexually. I really was just like off the wall. Then I sort of just shifted into a more work-a-holic mode and then I shifted in to this art world thing. It’s just more gratifying to me. It’s like I want to hang out with the BIG BOYS (or ladies). There’s just something about harpooning an abstract painter. Although I don’t like that the Art world can be so boring. I used to think of it as “old school” to be making interesting work. I’m glad you guys think it’s cool to be interesting too, it’s not just old school…
Diamond: Like having your work be super layered and really saying something, versus just being super cool and not giving a shit?
LobstaGirl: Some artworks can be very aloof – just pushing you back. There’s a lot of cool ideas in Matthew Barney’s work but then there’s this level of remove that’s very icy for me.
Diamond: Our work is always very personal and we’re honest about where it comes from.
Cristal: And it relates more to pop culture. It’s work responding to the age we live in. Like maybe in the 70s they were reacting to something else and that’s why everything was so minimal. Even though there is a huge scene right now related to performance I think it’s different the way that we are incorporating a lot of things from our life, our rituals in a way. In Chile where I’m from there is nobody doing performance. You talk about performance and they just think about maybe the 70s work but there’s not that new wave.
LobstaGirl: Even the general public thinks that. My Dad will be like “Becks you’re an amazing artist and an actress!” And yet he refuses to watch any of my videos.
Diamond: I would rather hide my videos from my family. I would hide them from most people actually. Sometimes I feel really conflicted by all of the different personalities that I put out through my various art practices, or you know like we don’t want our booby pictures on Facebook because my whole extended family is on Facebook and that world colliding is freaking me out.
LobstaGirl: Oh I hate that. My Dad tried to Facebook friend me like five times and I was like get a clue.
Diamond: Facebook is becoming such a weird fucking zone. Sometimes I’m just so motivated to do an emotional purge of some sort, saying something that I shouldn’t say to that many people but then like nobody really cares anyway. There’s so much going on and you think you have this huge audience and you do but at the end of the day they just don’t give a shit.
LobstaGirl: It’s funny how people respond to certain things or not. It’s like people can count on me for an innuendo. I feel like there’s a lot of room in my language for more exploration. I’m not interested in the straight up politics anymore. I don’t even read the news anymore. Although I mean it comes to me, when it comes to me – and believe me it does.
Diamond: It’s filtered through the people, filtered through Facebook.
LobstaGirl: Filter it as we will – Facebook – I mean that’s sick but I need that kind of buffer, you sort it out first because I can’t deal with all that. I just want to be more in the place of my imagination.
Diamond: It can be really heavy. Going on the internet, email, Facebook, everyone and every entity, company is just trying to grab your attention now. The pace of life is so much quicker because of this technology you have to be really focused and there is only certain things that I choose to focus on or have time for and it’s definitely not the news or television. I’m really out of touch with what’s going on in the world I can only focus on so many things… like rappers and rappers.
LobstaGirl: Rappers, rappers, AND rappers!!
Diamond: It allows me to dance with this fantasy, with art, and people appreciate that.
LobstaGirl: I think we’re picking up on everything that’s going on in the world intuitively and that’s enough.
Diamond: It’s just a very small filter, our art, it’s crystallizing our perception of the world. It illuminates something for people because they’re like “WOW I have that experience too…” For the artist it’s magnified, so by magnifying it we explain it and push through.
LobstaGirl: Maybe that’s why we don’t look at performance art. I draw inspiration from what I see that’s very structured and conservative in art, I draw inspiration from that, I also get inspiration from history. I’m nerding out on Puritan history all of the time. I like to read a lot of non-fiction.
Diamond: It seems like the real inspiration for many artists and definitely for me comes from outside the art world. I appreciate art but I’m also kind of bored with it whereas other things might feel super interesting.
LobstaGirl: Yeah like rappers
Diamond: Totally. When I went to interview these rappers the Illuzion the one who I initially contacted Salomon Faye really wanted me to interview his friend Ryan Bock who he collaborating on a video with. Of course it was this white kid making video art who went to art school just like me and it felt a little too familiar. I’m looking to rappers trying to unravel the Holy Grail not realizing how much this longing is about my own real or perceived lack. For the Illuzion as rappers coming up these days they don’t even want to be exclusively hip hop they want to write plays and paint and the works.
Cristal: That was just like this rapper I dated Char for a while. She was always like “Oh I wish I could just rap in a gallery” and “I just really want to go to museums…”
Diamond: It’s exotic for them.
LobstaGirl: I collaborate with a lot of musicians. I danced my ass off the other day at Flux Factory until 4 in the morning. The female DJ is actually a photographer and I’ve done some projects with her. She is from South American and she played a lot of Cumbia. She turned it out! I was like “Girl – people fucking needed that.”
Cristal: Otherwise it just becomes so dry like where do you get your inspiration from, you know?
Diamond: Art that quotes art, I hate that, even though we all do it but that inside joke thing that just drags us through the trail of a bunch of dead white males? Ick
LobstaGirl: Yeah it’s so gross. I hate that. It’s like don’t you have anything to say? Even my humor is very serious, I have things to say.
Diamond: Humor makes things accessible.
LobstaGirl: How is the Warrior Goddess Workshop at the Living Gallery going, did you get funding?
Diamond: We got a Brooklyn Arts Council grant. It’s our first grant, it’s small, it’s a bare bones grant.
LobstaGirl: That’s awesome I’m just glad you’re being compensated to do it though even if it’s minimal – it’s RESPECT.
Cristal: Yes and it does give it more legitimacy.
Diamond: We’re paying guests artists and we rented the Living Gallery space, it’s good to spread the love…
Cristal: Also Nyssa’s gallery does have a lot of community-oriented activities and basically it’s our very first work totally oriented to community so it does present a lot of new challenges. We’ve been going out to schools trying to get young women and then they’re just kind of laughing and just don’t care a lot of times.
LobstaGirl: I wish the kids would realize how special that is. The parameters around teaching young people can be so confining. I think it’s so cool that you’re giving them something unique and personal, that’s just not an institutional experience.
Diamond: I realized that’s the freedom of being an artist. Like when I go into a yoga studio to teach I need to work on my need to pretend to be something I’m not like “Miss Yoga” when I’m teaching. That’s a false thing too. Although I would not bring hip hop into a yoga studio setting regardless, there’s a traditional to uphold. So we’re doing it in a gallery! We need the artists to bring together these things that are so rarely given the chance to rub elbows
Cristal: Also being non-normative.
LobstaGirl: I did some hot yoga moves at karaoke the other day, downward dog!
Diamond: The thing is yoga is sexualized by most of the guys I know. Concerning my work people will say to me “Yoga is sexual isn’t that the point? Who cares?”
LobstaGirl: Sort of, but sort of not. I mean you’re working with the root chakra but you’re not coming to an orgasm in a yoga class, although you could…
Diamond: And then there’s that built in expectation that hip hop is sexual and anything but spiritual which is also false. I heard in India you actually have sex with your guru, that’s part of getting the tantric juice…
LobstaGirl: Did I tell you what happened at that tantric Goddess Workshop I went to a few months ago? They passed around this jasmine oil and for half an hour we were rubbing our breasts. I was kind of caught off guard but it very much opened me up in some way. I was like oh my god I am repressed in some way. I’m the sort of person if I go to church and people are hugging and shaking hands I’m always a bit hesitant but yet I’m the first person at a party to start grinding on someone’s lap, you know what I mean?
