Amber Hawk Swanson
Please Click Here to Watch Select Excerpts from “The Amber Doll Project” (1min)
In 2007, I commissioned the production of a life-like sex doll, a RealDoll, made of a posable PVC skeleton and silicone flesh, in my exact likeness. My doll, Amber Doll, began as a Styrofoam print-out of a digital scan of my head. Her face was then custom-sculpted and later combined with the doll manufacturer’s existing, “Body #8″ female doll mold. After completing, “The Making-Of Amber Doll” and “Las Vegas Wedding Ceremony” (both 2007), Amber Doll and I went on to disrupt wedding receptions, roller-skating rinks, football tailgating parties, theme parks, and adult industry conventions. In the resulting series, “To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll,” ideas surrounding agency and objectification are questioned, as are ideas about the success or failure of negotiating power through one’s own participation in a cultural narrative that declares women as objects. My work with Amber Doll, herself a literal object, deals with such themes through an oftentimes-complicated feminist lens. Similar concerns emerge in my series, “The Feminism? Project” (2006, posted below). The script for each video in “The Feminism? Project” was generated from interviews with women across the state of Iowa on the subject of feminism.
Select Titles From The Amber Doll Project:
1.) Wedding and Reception, 11:02min
During the performance event documented in the video, guests were invited to interact with Amber Doll for a cake cut, a first dance, a garter toss, and a bouquet toss. Attendees also opted to pose mimicking “doll face,” as imaged in several 30 x 40 inch portraits often shown with this body of work (Example: To Hold, Queer Wedding Portrait).
2.) Tailgate (Bears v. Saints), 1:04min
Amber Doll is abandoned in the center of multiple Chicago tailgate parties and left for participants to explore.
3.) eXXXotica (Girls Gone Wild), 7:00min
Dancing for cameras with Amber Doll as a prop are employees of the Girls Gone Wild corporation at the the eXXXotica conference in Miami. The eXXXotica conference takes place in the same convention center as Miami Art Basel.
Please Click Here to Watch Select Excerpts from “The Feminism? Project” (1min)
Starting with sorority sisters and ending with her own mother, Amber Hawk Swanson scripts her ten videos from “The Feminism? Project” from edited interviews with a variety of women. Their original responses to the topic of feminism range from naïve surprise to composed discourse, but become flip one-liners and ironic ramblings when voiced by Swanson in valley-girl intonation and enacted in provacatively sexual contexts.
- Kendra Greene (Museum of Contemporary Photography)
Titles From “The Feminism? Project”:
1.) Feminists People,1:32min
2.) What People Went Through to Get to Where They Are Today, 2:28min.
3.) Not Really, But Kind of a Feminist, 1:23min
4.) Other Things to Do, 1:00min
5.) Women Who Don’t Take No For An Answer: Girls Gone Wild, 3:31min
6.) That’s Deep, 4:23min
7.) Not a Feminist Way of Thinking, Daddy’s Little Girl, 1:28min
8.) That’s Deep: Again, 11:03min
9.) I’ve Never Really Been Into Feminism, 1:43min
10.) Embracing That Part of You That Makes You a Woman, 1:11min
Amber Hawk Swanson (b. 1980 Davenport, Iowa) lives and works in Brooklyn. Recent exhibitions include Locust Projects (Miami), Non Grata Art Container (Estonia), and The Redhouse (Syracuse). Recent residencies include Fountainhead (Miami) and Vermont Studio Center. Her work is included in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago) and has been reviewed in Map Magazine, Sex TV, The Associated Press, Time Out Chicago, and Flavorpill. Hawk Swanson holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and two BFAs from Iowa State University. Notable projects include “The Feminism? Project” (2005-2006) and “Amber Doll” (2006-2008).
Amber,
The juxtaposition of these 3 scenes is really compelling. The violation of Amberdoll is both disturbing and normalized. And it’s clear from seeing all these together that we are all complicit in the culture of violation.
Hi Amber,
Thanks for posting. A friend of mine saw your MFA show in Chicago and told me about it, so I’m really glad to see your work here!
Cheers,
Susan
Amber,
Are you still doing work with Amber doll? I see she’s in the coffin at the Locust Projects show. Has she, literally, been laid to rest for you?
Good Afternoon, Susan.
Thank you for your question. You are correct, Amber Doll was part of a funerary installation in my exhibition at Locust Projects. The exhibition included surveillance of visitors’ interactions with Amber Doll as she was laid out in a casket. The live feed footage was viewable on a monitor on the other side of a wall that separated the visitors interacting with the Doll from visitors monitoring their actions.
Having completed the first component of my work with Amber Doll, I am currently at a critical stage of development in my work. The second component of my work with my doll includes using her as a “puppet,” both literally by enlisting actors to manipulate her posable limbs, and digitally by inserting her posed image (along with actors’) into altered video stills. I am also digitally inserting Amber Doll into small, hand-built “re-creation sets” inspired by the sets described in the violent fantasies I have begun collecting from both women and men. The result will be a series of videos and photographs that will combine multiple studio-based images and altered video stills. My forthcoming series with Amber Doll will question ideas about permission, consent, agency, and fantasy.
To further address your mention of Amber Doll being laid out in a casket for the Locust Projects exhibition, I have copied an excerpt of an interview I did with Nicole Pasulka for Gallery Diet below my comment signature.
Warmly,
Amber
NP: How was the show at Locust?
AHS: The public opening definitely stood out. I had her laid out in a funerary installation. She was in a casket surrounded by fresh flowers. People were able to come close to Amber Doll. Her face and torso, where people might be walking, was surveilled by a camera with a live feed to a monitor on the other side of a free-standing wall. That was the first real-time performance of sorts that I’ve mounted—the viewers became the stars of the final video that they would encounter. It was surprising as an installation, but then it took on this tone of—I keep using this word—violation. I witnessed a different kind of aggression than I’ve noticed in other places when a young man wound up and forcefully punched her in her face.
I spoke with Lori Waxman for a Q&A for the show before the exhibition about how for me it’s all about consent and permission. I was curious about what would happen in these places where there’s a complete lack of permission to touch and be sexual. She’s this RealDoll who gives you this permission in a way, but she’s in this casket carries all the codes of “respect.” He really punched her, and we watched it in the monitor.
hi where to get The Feminism? Project video eh? looking forward to see it thx >.<
full version i mean =.=
Hi Amber, It would fascinating to see/hear the results of The Feminism? project. I sincerely mean that!
Can it be published partially or entirely in video? If so will it be available on the internet?
Good luck with this and future work.
D.