Today was an off day, so “My back and hip are outta place, and there’s a rash up on my face” gets one outta work QUICK, and a lie leads to hanging with Grams all day. So I’m sitting next to her now with my 30-body back (that honestly is a little crooked), getting tanked on our third drink, and it’s only 2PM. Going back and forth from joints in the car and sips of whiskey with Grams, deflecting texts from coworkers, but mostly just being a pervert all day with my time. And then REBA’s “NECESSITY OF FOREPLAY” comes pegging in on a window merely inches from Grams, but Grams like W/E having recently been told she ate edibles with me on accident; REBA’s “NECESSITY OF FOREPLAY” comes to fruition and I really hate shaving.
So, REBA’s whole bit is generously twisted and wonderful bugged, but there’s an irresistible intrigue here that gets me stoked on REBA’s enthusiasm:
Reba Beauchamp’s work, whether physical, poetic, or otherwise, toys with and deconstructs extremes: the antic & grotesque inherent in female beauty standards, the physical body en genere, and their upkeep (Secret Wishes, 2014); the absurd projections of her eating-disordered self (Purge, 2014); the dichotomy between her “academic self” & hypersexual internet personae (MY DIARY, 2015). Her poetry performance, Necessity of Foreplay, released on Gauss PDF, obsesses over the ‘Hey Girl’ pickup line until it becomes almost prayerful, deteriorating into violent extremes. First performed as part of Charlottesville VA’s 30/30 Arts Festival, the piece is the inspiration behind her latest foray into musicianship, in which she calculatedly, subliminally weaves the pickup line and the poetry that follows, burying it underneath a selection of YouTube’s finest body-based detritus: a recording of Michael Jackson (her childhood idol)’s pleas of innocence, one famous clip of a sorority sister lamenting her lost status as head honcho. The accompanying video, pasted together in her traditional “from the bedroom” DIY-style, zooms in on the body further, highlighting cinematographic interpretation of “fetishes” as well as her own interpretation of “female cleanliness,” in which she performs the ultimate preparatory act, shaving, with what she reveals as “buttercream frosting.” The result is a kind of new body, one in which the bizarre, the sexual, and the so-called fetishistic are taken to bold, terrifying, and comedic extremes.
• REBA: https://soundcloud.com/rebabeauchamp
• REBA: http://www.beccasdiary.com
• REBA: http://www.rebabeauchamp.com
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