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Isaac
Stolzfuts’ Journal: A Web
Log about Male Sexuality, Art, Culture, and Politics
John Bittinger Klomp
Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
USA
Through this project I have come
to visualize human sexuality as a three dimensional paradigm that
readdresses the faulty cultural binary understanding of human sexuality as
either homosexual or heterosexual. The
journey leading to that conclusion began on July 3, 2003 when I created Isaac
Stolzfuts’ Journal. Isaac
Stolzfuts, is a fictitious worldly Amish, retired
farmer, artist, and homosexual senior citizen that I perform through
his web log at http://zacstolzfuts.blogspot.com. I write entries that include
Isaac’s/my photographs and artwork on a continuing basis. I have also identified and explored specific discourses in
anthropology, philosophy, psychology, medical science, women’s studies,
and gay and lesbian studies about sexuality that I use to expand my
work as an artist/ writer and to evaluate my virtual performance of Isaac
Stolzfuts. I have constructed
Isaac as an elderly man who has successfully negotiated the conflict
generated by the confrontation between the traditional Amish /
Pennsylvania Dutch male sex role and a growing awareness of his gay
identity even as the cultural understanding of that identity has been
changing over time. I also
identify specific gay themed web logs (here after referred to as, “blogs”)
in order to filter them through the researched discourses and to compare
and contrast them with Isaac Stolzfuts’ Journal.
Whenever possible, I maintain an
e-mail correspondence between Isaac and readers/viewers of his blog in
order to assess their reaction to my character, Isaac and his blog. Because of my communication with readers, I, performing
Isaac, have proposed a model of communication through visual images that
is based upon Ferdinand de Saussure’s model of spoken language, page 12
in Course in General Linguistics (1966). The model allows me / Isaac to
conceive of the possibility that visual communication is in reality a
continuous loop based on interactions between the artist, the work of art
/ text, the viewer, and the culture at large that occurs and extends
through time. I believe that
these four forces do not operate independently of one another, and that
none acts as a determining power over the other three. Rather, they interact creating
gradual change in the way the viewer perceives the artist’s intent, the
artists intent is perceived by the culture, and the art work / text is
understood by both viewer and culture.
The model serves to reinforce my own interest in creating art on
the web that is increasingly open to viewers/readers everywhere, and in
which the distinction between viewer / reader, and artist / writer becomes
increasingly indistinct.
However, the
most important aspect of the project about the fictitious
worldly Amish, retired farmer, artist, and homosexual senior citizen, the
related discourses, blogs, and viewer / reader’s e-mails is that they
have helped me to view human sexuality as a composite of philosophical,
spiritual, psychological, and moral aspects in which the purely physical
is included as but one component. I
believe that this Western composite sexuality is continuously being
constructed and becoming more inclusive as individuals and groups of
various sexual identities act on it over time.
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