Peter Kinstone’s 100 Stories About My Grandmother is on exhibit now at Gallery TPW, as part of both the Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival and CONTACT 2008. Interviews with 100 male sex workers who are asked to share stories about their grandmothers are split into four viewing stations. The interviews range in duration from 45 seconds to 22 minutes. Each video is located in a space resembling a grandmother’s living room, complete with an old couch, shaggy carpet, a brass-and-glass or wooden coffee table, and bowls of candy.
The beautiful thing about art is that despite any artist’s intentions, every viewer arrives at a certain work from their own personal, political, social and cultural experience. It is perhaps for this reason that I found Kingstone’s 100 Stories a work that gives voice not only to a marginalized group of male sex workers, but also to women, by way of contrast. Of course, I must prefix ‘sex workers’ with ‘male’ (as all of the other essays I’ve seen about Kingstone’s work have had to do) because the normative assumption of ‘sex worker’, ‘prostitute’ or ‘whore’ is that she is a woman.
From my own perspective as a woman who believes in the legalization of prostitution for the sake of the health and safety for those in the industry, I found it interesting that the men interviewed by Kingstone for 100 Stories were given a voice in a true, authentic and pure way. Their choice of profession is never exploited and barely even mentioned.
In the selection of interviews I managed to watch at the opening, I never once passed judgment in their storytelling; I never once thought, “Hmmm, that explains why he became a sex worker.” Although nurture obviously plays a huge role in the development of every person, I believe that if I was watching female sex workers discussing their grandmothers, I would look for clues as to why they may have “resorted” to sex work. Kingstone’s seemingly unmediated portrayal of the men interviewed manages to legitimize sex work in a way that I feel can’t be done with women because of general cultural assumptions about and expectations of ‘prostitutes’.
Even though I know it wasn’t Kingstone’s point, 100 Stories made me think differently about the autonomy and humanity of sex workers of any gender. The men aren’t viewed as whores or extant to fulfill sexual fantasy. Their personal, familiar stories are told and their occupation is peripheral, irrelevant.
All in all, I enjoyed Kingstone’s piece. I will be going back to Gallery TPW to watch more of the interviews — the total running time is six hours so I doubt I’ll be able to see them all — but I do want to get a better sense of the testimonies and how they fit into the overall narrative and the construction of a median grandmother.
I do have one question though: Why, when giving voice to the marginalized, does Kingstone locate them in a fabricated environment that speaks to stereotype? I understand the desire to create a cozy, domestic setting in order for viewers to have an intimate connection with the interviewees, but I found this connection impossible to make. None of the speakers I saw addressed the camera, and their stories are clearly being told to the man behind it. In light of that, the domestic setting established a contradiction between breaking down stereotypes and cultural assumptions while building up more about other people.
100 Stories About My Grandmother by Peter Kingstone runs until June 14, 2008.
One Comment
His living room settings are stereotypically those of grannies because Kingstone is trying to construct an image of grandmotherly-ness that he was unable to experience for himself.
Given that his own grandmother was a sex trade worker who left his mom when she was 18, Kingstone visited the cities where his grandma was known to have work. He retraced her steps and, stitching the stories of grandmothers together is attempting to fabricate the Ultimate of Grandmothers.
Of course, given the heterogeneity of grandmothers – and any given social group for that matter (including male sex trade workers) – one is never capable of reaching this one, core essence. Humanity is too complex and precious for that.