Actually, here's one:

Stefani Germanotta
November 1, 2004
Assignment # 4: Reckoning of Evidence

The terms of the human body, some might say, are determined through a theoretical dissection of both the private environments and public atmospheres in which we live. By terms, the rules and evaluations of bodily condition, I mean to establish a division of perception…

The first divide is that of the social body, the perception of our bodies in relation to a larger intellectual and sexual community, one that views each other in groups. The second divide is the condition of our nature, a perception of the body without relation or comparison, a singular entity that is independent, formless, and free. This segregation of seeing is general and yet universal because it capitalizes our differences. By examining these seeming generalizations, we break them down. It is through a demolition and reconstruction of these concepts that we can assign specificity and reason to these ways in which we look.

It is in the freeing of both natural and artificial bodies that art is created. For while some artist’s depend on the predisposition of their subjects to provide the work with it’s primary message and meaning, other artists rely on a temporal and physical freedom„an ability to use objects while also freeing them of their social significance and thus endowing them with endless possibilities of form. Spencer Tunick, an installations artist and photographer, struggled to achieve this freedom as a working artist in New York City. This artist is most famous for his installations, often characterized by masses of naked people arranged together in domestic locations, and in countries from every continent of the world. Removed of sexual implication or intention, the nudes are used primarily and only as intended by the artist, as an exploration of the shape, contour, and texture of the naked body. Spencer is fascinated by the metamorphosis of the human body into a form, and the effect that his chosen locations have on this new shape (and vice versa) . In this way, the naked bodies are Spencer’s clay, and he uses them in the same manner that a painter uses oils or a sculptor uses marble.

This way that the artist looks at the body, is a radical contradiction to Western society’s view of the nakedness. In the eyes of some of his critics, Spencer’s work invades social privacy not only through the art, which to them degrades the sacredness of the body by exposing it in mass nudity, but also in the making of his art which requires an abnormal amount of public nudity, indecent exposure. Tunick challenges traditional ideas of intimacy, and asks us to free the body of sexuality and view it aesthetically for the purpose of his art. The social body cannot exist, most specifically in the nude, as anything other then a sexual thing. This is our naked condition.

The analysis of form, while an engaging arc to follow, can also reveal an inverse exploration of the body. An examination of the deformed. This word, Michel de Montaigne addresses in his essay Of A Monstrous Child, suggesting that the existence of a social body is formless, but far from free. He describes the figure of a boy, below the breast he was fastened and stuck to another child, without a head, and with his spinal canal stopped up, the rest of his body being entire (Lopate 57). Montaigne paints for us, a portrait of the boy’s physical form, or rather his de-form. With fastened, stuck, and stopped as his verbal interpretation of a Siamese twin, he illustrates how a human body, or form, can possess a lack of freedom in that it is harnessed to its disabilities in a physical way. For the deformed, there is an ownership of one’s difference, an ownership that is visible and undisputable. Through a scenic description of a deformed child, Montaigne uses the different shapes and contours of the child’s deformed body in order to create a visual contrast between what is ordinary and what is unordinary.

The perceptions of the nude and the deformed both manifest out of a concept of the social body, and the ideological contrast and visible conflict that is created in their presence. In Of A Monstrous Child, Montaigne asks us to consider the way we look at the body, and at each other. Montaigne suggests:


What we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity of his work the infinity of forms that he has comprised in it; and it is for us to believe that this figure that astonishes us is related and linked to some other figure of the same kind unknown to man. (58)

When we view something contrary to custom we assign them a monstrous quality. We infer based on something’s lack of ordinariness that it is disgusting or somehow linked to something inhumane, in some cases one might say uncivilized. In light of Montaigne’s theory, that we assign the unordinary with a monstrous condition, we can see the viewpoint from which art critics, the government, and the public, condemn Spencer Tunick’s work with naked bodies. Because it is not socially ordinary; it is irregular to see that many nudes amassed at one time, the art possesses a grotesque quality for the viewer.

This assigned foreignness can be designated as a kind of artistic racism, a public perception that handicaps from seeing and experiencing different forms, whether artistic or natural. There is an error in our perception„that our perception of the human body is somehow flawed. We call contrary to nature what we call contrary to custom (Lopate 58) We are trained only to be accepting of the regular, and it is this blindness that prevents us from seeing the prodigy in that which we have never seen before.

It is possible that in our naked form, in our deformed, that we are not only exposing our vulnerability, our skin, our scars, our flaws, and our genitals. But we also are exposing our secrets.

In spite of Montaigne’s great idealism, this perspective that allows us to choose the way in which we view the body, there is still an unavoidable clause that needs analyses. Sexuality manifests most physically… [the copy I have cuts off here]

Source

I think she's going to end up performing at the VMAs and that will be the only promo for the single

The only thing I could find was her essay titled "Reckoning of Evidence".

http://wellesleyunderground.com/post...ga-is-a-winner

The essay is so ironic. She's basically writing about what she is now.

She really never changed. She is nawt fake.

Gonna read through the essay and highlight the relevant parts.

I'd LOVE house. I'm always wanting artists to take dance music to the next level, but a lot of times they don't, or just wash, rinse & repeat (RedOne is currently doing this really badly - his quality has really fallen off ATM). Full on house from a popstar, with some radio-friendly aspects to it, could cause others to take note.

Has anyone heard the song Knas? If GaGa did music like that...

tbh she already knows how we feel. I wouldn't be surprised if she's read a lot of our post on here. She's said it on Howard Stern that when David Bowie changed his fans wanted him back. And she also claimed that we wanted a little more TFM but we got BTW and weren't ready for it.. She definitely knows what she's talking about.

Wait till I start getting my music out there

Imagine if the next album actually has "sledge-hammering dance beats"

I'd love for an album with no guitar at all. Just pure dance music

There's nothing new about house, but it's something that's overlooked by the public currently and could be lucrative for Lady Gaga.

She did it when she highlighted dance music in 2008. It wasn't new, dance wasn't invented by her, but she reminded people of what was already there. I was just telling Gagasm, Adele did that with the classic ballads herself.

House is obviously riskier than electro or relatable ballads, but it can be done. It's been present and bubbling up in the underground scene for years.

She is a genius. I could never think of stuff like these

Oh yes, i'll never forget her statement about that.

On how she knows how he changed and the fans wanted the original image back, but that was still him as well.

As in Gaga will keep changing, but it will always be Gaga no matter what reinvention.

I don't want her to attempt to remake TF or TFM. Usually when stars try to duplicate past masterpieces it doesn't work well.

I don't want something i've already gotten before, I want her to always give us NEW whilst staying true to herself and changing and exploring new things.

"Judas is Bad Romance Version 7"

Yass Gagasm you get it completely I am ready for this new era!!!

Gaga's intelligence blows my mind sometimes.

People call me smart and I have an IQ of an estimated 180 (which is apparently really damn high) and I win awards for intellectual things, and her vocabulary and the deep concepts she speaks about sometimes actually make my head hurt. She's undeniably a genius, no doubt about it.

Which is why I have a strong feeling that she knew very well what she was doing when she released the singles she did and made the BTW era as it was.

I do think I have earned a lot more respect for the era recently, seeing as it furthered her place in pop culture substantially and was far more experimental than other major releases such as Teenage Dream, Talk That Talk, Loud, and Animal + Cannibal, while still managing to be as good as all of those.

I didn't know he had it in him

That's basically one example of what i'm saying. I like Judas too.

I just can't wait for new music from Gaga.

What kinda of Fame Aristoteles teas, we need to thread this ATRL needs to be educated, bold the most important parts and hit that bottom!

Wow. I just listened to some of Fernando's mixtape and Jesus. I want Gaga to do some of this. That one that starts at 53:50 needs to show up somehow in Gaga's album - something really similar sonically from her would be amazing

And 56:08 too

So, what do you guys think this next album will deal with in terms of concept? We know it should have something to do with the downfall/decay of the pop star, but do you think it will also reference the concept of the "fame kingdom"?

I can't wait to see the house influences