Performance Artist Jake Dibeler Thinks It’s Rude If You Jerk Off To His Performances

Sunday, September 7th – In the early afternoon on day two of Brooklyn’s two-day Bushwig drag festival, Jake Dibeler and I are hidden away in a quiet studio at the shambolic Bushwick arts and performance venue Secret Project Robot, talking about his provocative performance work for what he says is the first time. Dibeler doesn’t enjoy talking about his work because, as he tells me early on, the performances are just an extension of him, like an extra, tattoo-covered limb.

For most of the interview I glance at one of those limbs, Dibeler’s leg, where a tattoo of a wide-eyed-man wearing a ball-gag lies next to a tattoo of a cackling skeleton head. That juxtaposition seems to represent the recurrent theme pairings found in Dibeler’s work: dark and light, comedy and horror, death and sex, pain and pleasure, the internal and external. A typical performance will feature thrilling and carefully considered acts of violence, lip-synching, nudity, as well as expressions of naked, raw, seemingly improvised anger. Recently, Dibeler’s ventured into music making with a band called bottoms who have begun gaining a fanbase with their intense musical performances, which feature Dibeler in jockstrap, dress, wig, and zombie contacts writhing and singing at a pitch high enough to break glass over electro-metal synth and drumming. The group was recently signed to Atlas Chair, headed up by musician J.D. Samson of the bands Le Tigre and MEN, and their album Goodbye is due out in January. (Preview their lead single “My Body” here) Needless to say, this won’t be his last interview.

Adam: Jake, at the beginning of every interview I usually shit on each of my subjects.

Jake: I’m bartending all day. I don’t want to smell like shit.

Sorry. It’s the rules.

I guess if it’s the rules…

So just for uninitiated Sword readers, do you have a definition of what you do, what your mission is?

I’m the worst at this but everybody else writes about me and they always write better stuff than I can.

What’s the best thing someone wrote?

The best thing was Colin Self, who was writing something about me for something. He said that I combine the terrifying and the joyful to touch on historical anxieties surrounding HIV, gay suicide, depression, getting fucked by strangers in my basement. My performances are about me, they’re just a surreal diary form. That’s why it’s hard for me to talk about because they’re so basic to me, you know? I’m literally just thinking and putting it down and it comes out in this way. So the choreography and the music and the cultural detritus are all just pulled from the time that I’m working on the piece so they’re a pretty accurate, yet abstract representation of me.

They’re an extension of you, is what you’re saying?

Yeah. They’re a way for me to connect with people that’s pop, you know? I can be a little abstract but also have these things that people recognize. I also feel like in this way I can be a little more vague and people can just feel it a little more viscerally than having there be a plot, or really a structured narrative.

The one performance I saw most recently was the one you did at that gallery in Bushwick.

You saw “Kevin”.

Yes. Can you just describe what happens in that piece?

Well the piece always changes. In that performance there are three of us and there’s a lot of same-exacting I call it, where everybody’s doing the same choreography together. There’s also lot of blood.

You’re wearing nude dresses.

Yeah. I wear nude a lot, I always like to be in the nude or black. Because I hate having to pick clothes but also being naked is such a thing so I try not to use it too excessively, which is something we’ll talk about later because it’s the crux of my issue as a performance artist.

You’re also cutting yourself.

I try to crack a mirror and cut myself with it. But it’s not as dark as it sounds. No matter how dark I make things, people always find a way to laugh at it, there’s always a humor in it.

Well horror and comedy are on the same plane.

Exactly. People say to me, “Well I think they’re laughing nervously.” But I actually think people get it, you know? It’s funny, the idea of somebody trying and failing to hurt themselves, but in a way that’s silly, you know?

And then all three of you burst into Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” Which made me think about that old myth about suicides going up over Christmas.

Yes. Which is a way of suddenly changing the tone — it comes right after the mirror. Which is just how it is. An explosion of nothingness. That Mariah Carey song is not about anything. I’m Jewish. I don’t have Christmas. That song doesn’t mean anything to me. But emotionally it’s just at this sort of apex. And it’s just the insincerity of it. To use the most insincere thing, that’s what people relate to, pop music and cultural detritus. That’s the most insincere stuff I can find. That’s the common thread with people. Pop culture – people get it. I’m trying to make it really easy for the audience at points.

That’s followed up by you sitting on a giant dildo singing Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry.” Which was hysterical.

Yeah. Totally. I’m always on the fence about being pornographic because – and you should ask me about that later, because that’s like – important – but the dildo it was like, it’s funny because people are like oh my god it was so big. But –

You have a huge hole.

Yeah I just slide right down on it. Haha. The dildo was the best part. Even trying to talk to you about it now, it’s just about what it was about. You’re riding a dildo and lip-synching a self-deprecating a girl group song. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just that’s where I was when I was writing it. The idea of putting yourself in this kind of awful situation where you’re riding a dildo in front of a group of people and lip-synching and it’s kind of humiliating but since I’m choosing to do it, I’m not at fault. I’m not actually humiliated because it’s not an accident, but that’s what people relate to the most. The humanity of it. I was also, while I was doing it looking a seven-year-old child in the eye.

That’s right, there was a little kid.

Right. That was my focus! He was sitting right across from me with his hip dad.

The dad obviously thought it was okay to have him see it.

The kid was reading a comic book.

That’s so funny.

People are so insane. Get a babysitter or don’t come. Or you know what. Bring your kid and if he sees a fat person riding a dildo that’s that.

 

Why is the piece called “Kevin”? Who is Kevin?

Kevin comes up a lot, like he comes up in bottoms stuff too. He’s just somebody that I slept with and have really good sex with, but he doesn’t mean anything to me emotionally. I think giving him this weight is what’s really necessary to me. This person doesn’t even know about any of this stuff. It’s not even really about him. It’s him but it’s also about anybody. It’s just interesting to me to kind of be fake giving this person I slept with so much credit and reverence in the work. People are like “Who’s Kevin?” I’m like Kevin’s just somebody who came in me a whole bunch.

Why Kevin as opposed to some other person?

Because Kevin was somebody I was sleeping with when I was writing it, and Kevin is this person that I think is so beautiful and I always think he’s so out of my league but he always wants to sleep with me and every time it’s this huge thing for me like, “This person who is so out of my league wants to sleep with me.” He’s like, “You have the best hole ever,” I’m like “What???” It blows my mind. It’s like, I could never date this person because we don’t click mentally but sexually it’s so perfect, so he’s just like that. It’s not even like, this person, but that insecurity I have is totally summed up in Kevin. It’s not really about him, it’s about me. It’s about what he stands for emotionally, which is me not having any confidence sexually.

When did you first start performing?

I’ve always been performing my whole life but I guess, this type of stuff since college. It’s such an ingrained part of me that I didn’t think it was a thing. I obviously knew about performance art. I’d done theater for a long time, but I didn’t like performance art. I still don’t like seeing it. I find it boring. I’d rather see dance or theater. I think when you say performance art people think of one thing, Marina Abramovic or Yoko Ono. Which is not what I do. I do theater. Experimental theater. Dance. So for a long time I didn’t think about the fact that the way I’m processing stuff could be executed in this way. So I guess in college when I started being around people who were able to help me make this thing a reality, that was when it changed. I went to school for photography and once you’ve learned how to use a camera, bring a fucking book, it’s so boring. So I was just like, I can totally do this here and work on this on my own. I guess in college is when I started performing in this capacity to people.

Was there a progression from what you were doing in the initial period to the more extreme stuff now?

No, I’ve always been extreme. It’s always been like this. I’ve always used the same formula — pop music, sex, dance choreography, violence, blood, teen angst, but I’ve kind of come from performing like an angry teenage girl to a more subtle adult that’s angry about different things. When I was making work in college and post-college, I was angry about things like “I hate my body. I hate being me. I hate my parents.” Blah blah blah. Recently I’ve taken this shift to being like – it’s still the same but it’s more focused and the quality of the rage is different. I don’t know how to describe it. I was reading about David Wojnarowicz and all these people who were angry at the government and people ignoring the AIDS crisis and that sort of thing. The anger is the same but it shifted into an adult place where I’m not just angry about myself, I’m just kind of angry about everything. I’m not whining anymore.

I feel like that whole anger about AIDS and the government is performed every day on Facebook. How can you amp up that rage in a performance?

Well because Facebook isn’t about anybody. Facebook is a way that you put something out into the world but it’s not about you or your body. It’s not attached to a body. And you know the things that Wojnarowicz and the ACT UP people were angry about aren’t so much what’s happening right now. It’s still an issue but it’s not at the scale it once was.

People aren’t dying left and right and nobody cares.

People are more active in positions of power. But it’s about making the anger in yourself, in your body. I don’t use Facebook to express myself genuinely because I don’t think it’s the right place to do so because it doesn’t give me any catharsis. Everything in Facebook becomes the same thing no matter what it is. You can’t be poignant sandwiched in between Ice Bucket Challenges and viral garbage. It’s not the right place. If I have something to say I’m going to say it to a roomful of people who want to hear it. That to me is more interesting and it does more for me and does more for the people who are interested in it than putting something online and having people click on it.

Tell me about your sexual development. In my head you used to be a total virgin nerd and then all of a sudden something clicked and you suddenly wanted every dick you could get. 

That’s so crazy that you say that because I’ve literally been touching dicks since I was in kindergarten. A total nerd! No way. I was goth but I was still getting it. I’ve literally been sexually active with boys since I was in kindergarten. I haven’t had a break. I’ve been sexually active since the point when you don’t even know that it’s being sexually active. I lost my virginity when I was thirteen.

To a friend?

Yeah. Somebody at summer camp. I was the kid in the neighborhood sucking everybody’s dick. And it’s still the same.

Same act, different neighborhood.

Yeah. People still have no idea what to do with me. I’ve had the same desire for my entire life. It’s really crazy. I remember it all. I’m totally cognizant of it all. It’s crazy how I was totally sexually developed by the time I was a teenager. I’d had sex with older men, knew the whole cannon. There was nothing that I was not familiar with. Being so sexual in these formative years, I developed at the same pace as you’re developing as a person. It’s like I grew up into a woman and had already had a fist inside me. It was this not miraculous at the same level as everything else…

You were getting fisted as a teenager?

Essentially. Not necessarily fisted but like, yeah, like I was in that place. The same place I am now as an adult. Obviously it was different because it wasn’t as easy to sleep with people.

Were people wary sleeping with someone younger?

No. They loved little goth butt. Can you imagine going to meet with somebody and having a little 13 year old in a Nine Inch Nails shirt and sucking your dick and looking up with blue hair? It was harder to sleep with people because the internet had just happened. I didn’t even have a phone. I don’t even remember how I met up with these older dudes. They picked me up in their trucks, took me to construction sites and fucked me in the back of their trucks. If I’d had a smart phone back then I don’t think I’d be here. I’d be dead in a ditch somewhere.

What point did the depression become a major part and was the sex a way to deal with depression?

Totally. I had a great childhood as far as like, growing up gay, not a thing that affected me negatively. My parents could probably tell you more about my work than I could. They’ve been dealing with it their whole lives. I’m not even gonna go into it. It’s too perfect. It’s gross. I had the best upbringing. My parents are my best friends. So there was never a point where growing up gay was an issue. Like I said, when you’re growing up sexually so early, you’re not thinking about sexuality, it’s just happening. It’s instinctive. I think that led to me becoming a gay person and made it a lot easier because I kind of had been starting it young.

You didn’t have that awkward adolescence when they come out at 22 and behave like teenagers.

Yeah. People are like when did you know you were gay. I was like kindergarten. I never needed to come out to my parents. At a certain point they were like, “So seeing any boys?” I was such a faggot I didn’t need to come out. There was never a point at which I had to confront homosexuality. So that wasn’t part of the depression. I think that the sex and the depression are totally intertwined. Depression from sex, sex as way to deal with depression.

I have the same thing where in the beginning when I started having sex I would go into panic attacks and suicidal depressions after milestones, like, “I sucked a dick!” and in my head I’m really a faggot.

I never had that sort of shame, I guess, but it’s like since I had been having sex for such a long time, sex for a really long time felt like it didn’t mean anything because for so long it didn’t and I knew that the people I was having sex with didn’t. When you’re having sex at 13, sex doesn’t mean anything. There was never any “We had sex, I love this person.” I knew that. No crushes. “He likes me!” I always knew it didn’t mean anything. I had experience. So sleeping with people isn’t as emotional as it is for a lot of people. For straight people the sex is built up a lot, emotionally. When you’re in school and they talk about sex they talk about straight sex. For me it wasn’t, oh it’s a big deal. It’s just like, I had a dick in me. Doesn’t everybody? The depression really came from sleeping with people and having it sort of be like, just that always. Even when I’m dating somebody all I want to do is fuck people. Sex is just this meaningless thing that I crave so much. To crave something so meaningless and be thinking, “I know that this is so meaningless but it feels so good.” That drives me insane, to want something so bad that I know doesn’t actually matter but also is like nothing feels better than getting a dick put all the way inside me. I think the depression came from this place where it’s like “All I wanna do is fuck.” And even if I find somebody that I really care for and who really cares for me, all I wanna do is fuck. Sex is this thing that totally sucks.

Would you like to be with somebody and not have that behavior?

I’ll always be interested in being in an open relationship. I want to have sex with as many people as I can. Sex is so good. People have sex differently. I’ll have a lot of bad sex differently and that’s fine. But then I’ll have sex with somebody and it’s so good and it’s if I’m dating just one person, I don’t get that. And I need that as a person. I need to have these little bombs going off. I will always crave intimacy on that level. It’s like I love the anonymity that will happen sometimes and the risk. Being in a relationship is great. I’ve loved everybody I’ve been in a relationship and it’s been great. My therapist said I’m addicted to the serotonin my brain produces when I’m having sex. Whatever I do emotionally with somebody, I’ll aways want that rush.

 

You don’t consider yourself an AIDS artist, do you?

That’s why I don’t talk about it a lot. Because it’s not about AIDS. It’s about me. That’s just a part of it. There’s so many other things that the work is about too. Recently I’ve become more aggressive about it. I think bottoms is mainly responsible for it.

Explain what bottoms is.

bottoms is a band that I sing for with Simon Leahy doing programming and Michael Prommasit drumming. Simon and I work on a lot of things together and he asked me to sing for the band and I don’t sing, I never was in a band and I don’t know why he asked me but I think it was probably because he saw my energy and was like, you could probably do something. So I auditioned for them, which was not a real audition, he was like “You’re in the band, babes.” I went and started to sing and I can only sing this one way which is this very high pitched way. People say it sounds like an Asian girl, a 14 year old girl, or Kathleen Hanna.

It’s very unintelligible.

Simon never heard it. When I went that first day his jaw was hanging on the floor. He was like “Oh my god!”

You’re not turning pitch shifters on to make that sound?

That’s how I really sing.

I thought it was all effects.

That’s what everybody thinks. I just got a vocal transformer that I use to add effects to it , but that base high-pitch thing is all me. But bottoms is a vehicle for me to be onstage and be able to perform a super-concentrated version of the things I’m interested in but without the choreography and the scripts and dialogue. In my performances, I’m walking, talking and dancing and doing this and following a script and in bottoms I’m just yelling. So it gives me this essentially, exact opposite sensation then when I’m performing my work because I don’t have to have any rules. But it’s cool to be able to like bring what I do in my work in a different way and in a more – it’s cool people are dancing to our songs that are to me so dark and goth and about the same shit that I work on. Being upset in your body and HIV and suicide and so it’s cool that people are bouncing around and relating to it when it’s just another way for me to be performing.

Let’s talk about something you said I should bring up, which is the pornographic quality of your work.

Yeah. The bear community. Don’t even get me started.

You were in Pinups Magazine.

Yeah. I told Christopher Schultz for the longest time no. Because it’s not because I didn’t want to do it, it’s because at that point, basically, I’m chubby and hairy that’s the way God made me. That’s the way she made me. But I don’t feel an affinity with other people who are chubby and hairy. Most of my boyfriends aren’t chubby and hairy. I hate that people in the bear community make me out to be this spokesperson for them. Which is fine, except for the fact that like, I’m just sexually this body for them, and it makes me so angry because I don’t try to be nude or anything to arouse anybody. I obviously understand that they link together. Yes, nudity is appealing. I’ve watched plenty of people who were in the same position I am and I’ve been turned on. But I guess as an artist, I’m able to look emotionally at it. People see my work, and this is from endless emails and comments and messages that I get. People are like, “Woof! Jerked off to your performance.” I’m like, “Did you mute it? Because I’m talking about my pussy and there’s a Rihanna song in it.” I love porn and seeing men naked. I will look at fucking porn as much as I can all day. But I can’t enter something that’s not pornographic, pornographically. If that makes sense. So people who look at my work and say they jerked off to it, it’s like dude, maybe you couldn’t tell that I took six months teaching this girl how to dance, and paid for a studio and got all these people to come to my show. I’m not making porn.

That’s not a compliment to you.

It’s not a compliment to me. I think it’s rude. If I was just on all fours spreading my fucking ass for you and you want to tell me you jerked off to it, fuck yeah. Cause that’s what it’s for.

It’d be like saying to Karen Finley –

Great tits! Woof!

“I jerked off watching you pull that stuff out of your pussy.”

Woof Karen! It’s like, fuck you bears. I don’t give a fuck about you. I don’t care about your culture. I will make friends with people in a community based on common goals and things that I have in common with them and personality, it’s like, I don’t need to be a part of a community because you feel threatened being fat and hairy and you feel like the only way for you to be a part of something is to find other people who are fat and hairy –

And create a clique.

I don’t need it. They made me this spokesmodel and that’s why I stopped getting naked as much. The only way to stop people from objectifying me. I mean, I get it, but to a certain point, I get being turned on by somebody you think is hot. If you were naked right now interviewing me, I’d want to touch your dick, even though you’re interviewing me and we’re not in a sexual situation, I wouldn’t because it’s not what’s going on. So this shift happened and I’m trying to be more adult and less loud because I’m in a way, weeding out the people who are actually invested in it, and not just trying to see me naked. But it’s still so funny to me because my website’s a Tumblr and I’ll see where stuff goes. I’ll post a photo from a show and I can look at it objectively. I know what people find more explicitly sexual than others, and I’ll post something that’s mainly performance based. It’ll end up on some armpit blog. I’ll look at the blog and it’ll be blatant porn, blatant porn, blatant porn, me in high heels with a spilled milkshake. I don’t see how that fits in! It’s crazy to me how people can do that. If I was looking at a porn blog and I saw me pop up I’d be like “Get this the fuck out of here!” I just don’t understand how you could watch my work and get a boner.

Would you ever want to make a porn?

Yeah but it would be a porn. It would be me getting fucked. It would be a porn. The porn I like to watch is people having sex. I wanna watch people fucking. That’s what turns me on. If I made a porn it wouldn’t be a performance. They’re different. I don’t mind performing for people who don’t know what they’re going to see because I’m more interested in having an audience with people who are conscious about what they’re going to see and want to have the experience. I had someone come up yesterday who was bartending and she was like, “That was really inspiring.” I am not looking to shock people.

Do you see yourself in a continuum with people like Wojnarowicz or Ron Athey or Leigh Bowery? Are there role models in terms of what you do?

Yeah. But these people are all so incredible, and I don’t want to lump myself into them, that seems damning to them. Wojnarowicz is somebody that I have always been really inspired by in everything that he does. His painting, writing, performance, music, all of it’s been really incredible. Ron Athey is also still incredible and these people are like always inspiring me, but I would say that I mostly watch people like Pina Bausch, Edward Albee plays, Christopher Durang, these dark comedies, that’s where I go to see my niche. All of those people are people that I definitely feel like I have an affinity with. I mean with bottoms there’s a link to Leigh Bowery and Minty on a greater scale. But I don’t have the energy for that shit. Or the capacity to be in a wig all day. Totally, though. Those are people that I’m always thinking about.

What’s your performance going to be today?

I’m gonna slit my wrists on stage, maybe to a Karen Finley song, maybe to a Shirley Temple song. Haven’t decided.

 

 

___________________________
Adam Baran is a filmmaker, blogger, former online editor of Butt Magazine and co-curator of Queer/Art/Film. His short film JACKPOT, about a porn-hunting gay teen, won Best Short Film at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and was recently featured on The Huffington Post, Queerty, and Towleroad, among others. He is a features programmer at Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival and NewFest in New York. In his spare time, he complains about things to his friends. “Fisting for Compliments”, his weekly musings about the intersection of sex, art, porn, and history, will appear every Monday on TheSword. You can contact him at Adam@TheSword.com and follow him on Twitter at @ABaran999. Check out his previous columns in the Fisting For Compliments Archive.