OUAD602- Fourth Meet

Annoyingly my camera ran out of battery as I was playing with the settings to start documenting her. Anyway I walked in and assumed my position; perched on the end of her bed. We chatted and caught up like we always do. She told me about her date and funny stories of what had happened at the weekend. This time she had her stage make-up on full and seemed to be more in the mood for performing and I could not help but be angry at myself for not charging my camera. The way her eye-lashes were shadowing her large childlike eyes, pencilled eyebrows and painted red lips, reminded me of the stage make-up I wore as a ballet dancer when performing as a young girl. It made me compare, the highly respected, disciplined, renowned ‘art form’ we call Ballet, to the performances Charlie undertakes at her liberty and will when ever she pleases. Performative dance, especially beneath the realm of Ballet is so regimented, choreographed and planned, yet still with the subtleties of lines, pattern of movement, and power of costume can tell stories of lust and sex. When I watched her that evening whilst she embarked on booking in a private show on her forum, sexually caressing her body standing up suggestively moving her hips and pushing together her breasts, I saw it so much more as a performance, where she too is creating lines, through movement and dance which have their own narrative, it being one that is more direct in the arousel of it’s audience. I asked her why such strong make-up. Enthused she showed me herself on camera exclaiming how much better it looks on cam than in real life. I have to say- she had a point. She looked incredible. I observed as she pouted her lips up close to the camera, bowing her head and looking up into the lens with eyes that invited the receiver to her bed. What dawned on me then, was how much the camera acted as a mirror. She doesn’t see her clients or what they do, her image is reflected back at her constantly. She is so aware of every movement, every angle in which she looks her best. Some would say it narcissistic, but again I could only compare this to the hours training as young girl in front of peripheral filled mirrors. Only I did not have floods of messages telling me how beautiful I am, I had the positions of authority picking apart every negative in order to fit me in it’s mold.

Ding ding ding, she struck gold, four of her clients had agreed to chip in for a private show adding up to a grand £6 a minute. I think I was more excited than her- for her I guess this is regular, but that amount of money a minute I just couldn’t comprehend. I asked her how long she would be doing it for as I was reaching for my camera (forgetting it’s battery situation), but she was distracted. She then turned the screen towards me and showed me that the guys were asking me to be a part of the show. She giggled and typed at speed that  “she doesn’t cam”. One of them seemed to express concern that I was going to be in the room during, and although disappointed that I was going to miss out of my first experience in documenting her full swing, I quickly told her I would leave, not wanting her to loose out on the money. I picked up my things, blew her a kiss and left.

OUAD602- Pictures taken of her chatroom

This a chart of who often she goes online, how many private shows she gets, how many tips etc. It surprised me how little she actually does it. She said she used to do it a lot more, but she said the money is good she doesn’t have to.

As you can see they are rely complimentary, even if using vulgar language at times, but like anything it’s what you get used to and Charlie said she really doesn’t let it bother her. Although it does make one wonder what effect this is having on her subliminally, and how she expects to be treated by men.

OUAD602- Third Meeting.

Walking through her front door felt as natural as going to see a friend this time. She invited me in and we went straight upstairs and sat on her bed whilst she told me about the date she went on. I asked her if she slept with him and she said she would never sleep with someone on her first date- and no I could just tell she wasn’t lying. There is something so innocent and naive about her. She is just as young as me when it comes to real relationships, yet such a confident professional on cam. She curled up in bed and started talking to clients. I asked how much money she wanted to make tonight, and she said because she was going on another date with this guy so she just wanted to make enough so he wouldn’t have to buy all the drinks. She said she would just do one or two private shows. I wanted to get to know her regular clients better, and so I asked her about them. She started to laugh and tell me all about one particular guy of whom she calls a ‘feeder’. Apparently he gives her his credit card details and she orders food to the house. Then all he wants is to watch her eat his food. Personally i’d find this unsettling, but she just loves it. She says that she gets free food and he gets to enjoy watching her eat it, what is wrong with that? I was in disbelief that he was so trusting that he gave her his credit card details, but they have this unbelievable trust and she tells me she could never steal his money, she respects her clients and doesn’t exploit them. It’s so impressive to watch her dealing with all the different requests, demands, insult, flattery etc. They all click on her chatroom and type all sorts to test how far she would go etc. She plays along with most of it, and laughs giggles and flirts. Controlling the situation in sometimes very passive-agressive ways. Most of the time they compliment her but there are the occasional guys that will call her awful things, and she laughs it off and explains that they just want to be dominating, and that she often plays the submissive role on cam. She took the following picture on her phone and sent it to me because she wanted me to include it in m project:

It is a conversation between her a few others on her chat room. At the top she is being what she calls ‘typical kitty’ and playing along with them saying for the right price she would do what ever they are suggesting. Then underneath one of the potential clients talks about a fetish called financial domination? I will have to look into this but Charlie turned to me and she said something like, thats where i would draw the line, i just couldn’t take the piss that bad and totally rinse someone’s bank account. Obviously some woman can, and don’t care about their clients which is so different to charlie.

She kept saying she wasn’t really in the mood to do a live show because she was cold an comfy in bed. She said she couldn’t be bothered to get all dressed up.. but i had a feeling that maybe because I was there she wasn’t prepared to do a live show just yet in front of me. I picked up my stuff and said I don’t want to stop you from making money for your date so i’ll get off. And she replied something like, ‘Yeh it’s hard to do the shows in front of someone because they can get pretty pornographic’. I didn’t want to say it then, but next time I might say something like, is it all possible, i remove myself from the situation and stand at the opposite side of the room, and you just pretend I am not there? Anyway hopefully the next meet I can get some imagery of her properly performing.

Follows are some imagery of her curled up in bed, very calmly chatting to her possible private show clients, and regular clients.

Yes that is a cot in her room and no she does not have a baby. She is at her mums house and it is kept in her bedroom. I quite like it being in the background because it reminds me of her sweet naivety.

OUAD602- How to visually display my meetings

I am thinking of using my reflections of each visit, and making them into short stories/ pieces of artistic creative writing, and putting them on display with imagery. I am still not exactly sure of the format, type of imagery or even type of writing. Looking at the artist Sophie Calle, she displays her work in the way i was imagining, and hopefully i can draw some inspiration from the way she does it, and put it into my own work. I am quite excited to to exhibit this way as I haven’t done anything like this before.

The last image is so similar to the work i was doing in second year when i choreographed dancers and projected text onto them. I have been thinking about the projection of text onto imagery. It can be very effective. However it can become quite illegible, and the content of the text for me is very important. I really like Sophie Calle’s exhibition where she has the large printed images, framed leaning against the wall.. with the text on top. I am going to go to the library now and look at some books on Sophie Calle.

OUAD602- Second Meet

I sent her a message the day before our second meet and asked if we could meet the next day. She said yes and I thought this time I would document her more in her work space at her home. However when I messaged her just before the time we agreed, she said she was at her friends house and asked if we could meet there. Alarm bells rang because I thought that meant our relationship was going too far down a friendship route rather than staying focused on what I am wanting to create. I agreed to meet up with her because it is hard enough trying to pin her down to certain time. I got the taxi to her friend’s house where she opened the door and I could tell she had partied all night. It was mid-week, and even though I am used to seeing my friends/ people that haven’t slept all night and day, it is normally through the weekend. This saddened me a little, which shocked me, because I realised I already cared for her, and didn’t like seeing her in this state mid-week, but I looking back and I feel guilty for judging her because I realised my friends and I are only justifying what we do by saying “we only do it some weekends”, she is not tied down to the hours of which the majority of society work within and for her Mid-week is relatively quiet on the camming front, so why can’t she enjoy herself midweek? I thought that we wouldn’t be able to get much work done etc, because of the state she was in but I was wrong. She made such an effort with me, invited me in gave me a drink and introduced me to her friend. I turned out that Charlie having the presence of her friend in the room made her more able to open up. I soon started to realise Charlie was more troubled than I initially thought. She told me how she has struggled with Bi-polar. The reason she kept saying she couldn’t meet up with me at first was because she was going through a really low swing in her mood and couldn’t sleep for days on end. I then thought to myself maybe how much of this job takes a toll on a young girl’s mental health. When I asked, she assured me that ‘camming’ is one of the most confidence boosting things anyone could do, and this wasn’t the reason for her unhappiness. She is constantly being told of her beauty and amazing personality. How people could talk to her for hours and never get bored. How they could never get a girl like her etc etc. She said she would go on cam when she felt down. Then I asked what initiated this extreme dip in her mood. She spoke about the break up of her boyfriend. I realised this was a good opportunity to ask her what effect she thought this occupation has on her private “real-life” relationships. She told me that at first he found it sexy, and hot. How that he loved how openly sexual she was and would experiment in ways he couldn’t with anyone else. Then as the relationship went on, he would come home and Charlie would be tired of being ‘sexy’ all day. Would just want to chill in her trackies and cuddle. He would ask things like “How come you dress up and put on this big show for all these guys you have never met, but for me your tired and not up for it?”. For most men, I can imagine they would find Charlie’s Job pretty tough to take, because of the idea of the many men seeing her do all sorts of sexual things. I said this to her, but she seemed to disagree. However to me it is evident that even though at first they would be up for it, as time progresses I can see how it would start to get to them. However, looking from personal experience and hearing experiences of others in relationship, keeping the flair of exciting sex at the beginning of the relationship is always hard to maintain. How much was this beak up to do with being unsatisfied with the change in energy and consistency of the sex or to do with the jealousy of the other men? Can not every woman associate with this trouble in their relationships? She turned on her cam and started to ‘advertise’ herself to the many men on her chat room, offering private shows for for say £30 for ten minutes. The following images are of her doing so:

I think she was very distracted, and was more interested in talking to me and her friend then working hard on getting a live show. But i managed to audio record her talking to her clients and was so interesting watching her, and seeing how professional she actually is.

OUAD602- Images of first meet

I was very aware of the sensitivity of our first meet, and when i got there I knew that pulling out my big SLR and snapping away at her would have created an unwanted boundary. Once we had both settled in, she seemed excited to be apart of the project and starting asking her clients what they though of ‘camming’- what women in the industry seem to call it. She said “Here take a picture of what this guy said!” and so i did:

This image shows all her of her live chats at the top. They are all watching her chatting away, talking to me/ to them, however they can only reply via text. This is where she advertises her live show, which are the ones that she charges money for. Note the person’s response in blue to where she asks his opinion on camming. Her response was quite good, she said something along the lines of, “Yeh it wasn’t my mums dream for me but she’s sat downstairs and doesn’t really care that I do this. She’s dead happy that I’m making enough money to look after myself without putting myself in any danger.”

It was interesting watching her in her work environment. She switches from each conversation replying to them, in a flirty, energetic way. Laughing and people remarks and making light of many situations. Her positivity was seriously admirable.

OUAD602- Documenting my first meet with webcam girl

The first meet with the webcam girl went so differently to how i expected. I guess i thought i would arrive- do the interview, take some images of her working with her clients and learn a bit more about it- then move onto the next girl I had made some contact with. When i arrived I could tell we were both nervous, and were sort of talking very fast. I was asking questions in a rather random order and she was answering them jumping from one subject to another in short breathes. I was fumbling around with my audio recorder trying to get it to work but the hold button spring had snapped and so i gave up. However I think it turned out to be more beneficial this way because we were able to forget about the formality of this first encounter. I decided that we both rather needed a glass of wine and a cigarette so i asked if she minded that i popped to the shop. I could see the relief on her face when i said this as i think we both knew we were nervously babbling on. On my return she already seemed so much more settled in her environment. Funny how even the idea of some wine and a fag can calm someones nerves, although I realised later it wasn’t just the idea of wine and cigs, it meant the pressure of such a formal encounter was taken away, and instead we started forming a relationship the way we are both accustomed to. We sat for about 4 hours, chatting like friends, sometimes we dipped into topic of her work, others just talked about her private life, and on occasion i talked about mine in a way to make her feel more confident and comfortable to talk about hers. Quite naively i thought i didn’t have pre-conceptions, and that I doing this project was the one that was breaking down the preconceptions of others however I was blown away by the normality of this girl. I know that i have been saying all along that I want to emphasise these girl’s reality, but i guess i still imagined her as this ‘other type’- even though i don’t think i would have admitted it at the time, or even realised i thought this, I was quite shocked that she was a girl my age, proud of her work and confident. I asked her if she wanted me to use her webcam name or her real name. She replied- “The reason I use a stage name is because I don’t want all the guys i speak to on cam filling up my Facebook inbox, but I’m not ashamed of what I do so why would I want you to use my stage name?”. Her name is Charlie, and even though she has given me permission to use her name, I am aware that many people have access to this page and because I will be posting imagery of her, I am going to refrain from using her last name, as to protect her. When she speaks of her clients and work, she laughs and recalls funny moments, and the requests of her different clients. Her tone becomes more serious when speaking of her regular clients and the exchange of therapy that exists in these virtual relationships. This was another pre-conception of mine that was broken down. I thought that all of her shows were sexual performances, I didn’t realise the scale and range of different relationships she has with (especially) her regulars. A lot of them love just to listen to her talk, she talks about her relationships with boys, her friends and family. He secrets, her ups and downs etc. I always assumed they kept their stage presence and didn’t reveal their own reality. I was so wrong, she says of course with many clients she has a very staged character, named Kitty Devine, however with some, she has built a virtual trust. Many might not see this as real, but for her they are as i am sure for her clients. Sometimes she is their to just listen to her clients, many who are extremely lonely and do not feel comfortable speaking so openly in reality, and use this liminal space as a platform to open up and build a relationship they cannot find in the ‘real’ world. Then there are of course the live shows which are extremely sexualised, are dominating, submissive etc, including performative dance, costume, props. By the end of the meeting i realised i did not want to include the mask. It felt so wrong to ask her to put it on, and so forced. I was taken a back by the calm exchange of conversation between us, being it our first meet (and no this wasn’t the wine, we had had a glass each and were talking so much we had forgotten about it). Our first meeting definitely has taken my project in a direction that was unexpected. I thought i was going to make almost confrontational film/images of these girls to confront people’s preconceptions, now i want to document this girl in particular. Meet with her as much as I can and get to know not only her but her clients as well, concentrate on the subtleties of the relationship we are forming, and the scale and range of relationships and clients she deals with. Learn about the world through her as my kind of port hole to it. I feel more inspired now, even though this is the first time I literally have no idea where my project is going to end up and is- at the moment an on going documentary of this girl in particular.

OUAD602- Preparation for first meeting with Webcam Girl

Bringing with me: SLR camera, Edirol Audio Recorder and interview questions.

Interview Questions:

– How did you first get into webcamming?

– How much of it was because you needed the money?

– How long have you been doing it?

– How would you compare it to stripping?

– What effect has it had on your confidence?

– What is the relationship like with your clients?

– do you feel pressured into doing stuff you don’t want to do?

– How protected is your identity?

– Does this effect your every day life?

– What effect does ‘camming’ have on your non-virtual relationships?

– What is it that you enjoy about ‘camming’?

– How open about your occupation are you?

– Do you ever feel the need to lie about it?

– In general, who would you say judges you the most?

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It is hard not to feel slightly nervous about my first meet. I have never met this girl before, and even though over Facebook she seems relaxed about the situation i have no idea how she really feels about it all. It is also hard to pin her down and get her to commit to a certain time and date because her hours are so erratic and leads a life that includes long hours of parties stretching through the week after the weekend. So she is either up or down, and often doesn’t feel like meeting- or maybe she is avoiding it?

OUAD602- Experimenting with Wrestler masks

Here i was experimenting with making sort of wrestler masks. The aim is to empower the wearer because of associated ideas of strength in the wrestling world… however they look pretty evil; I am starting to feel more unsure about the masks idea.