GIRLS DOT COM
Girls.com is not a website in the traditional sense. It does not exist online. I began creating girls.com when I was living in the desert with my friend. One day when we were sitting in our room, Beavis and Butthead style, lacking internet and craving fun, my friend told me they had invented boys.com. They pulled out a stack of drawings and stuck them to the wall, pointing, indicating that this was their website. The idea tickled me. I asked if I could run a sister website, girls.com. We spent the rest of our winter into the summer working on our websites. We would plaster all the wall space we could find with drawings and written notes belonging to our irl domains. Girls.com became an untamed space were I could start understanding the relationship between the girly joyous freedom of femininity, the sexual violence it is often subject too, and the resilience and anger created in the face of such violence. At the time, I was trying to understand why Kathleen Hannah and Princess Nokia but not going to the police, made me feel able to grapple with sexual violence. I could see what punk rockers could do to make a space of fantasy and revolt for survival, but not entirely what visual arts could do, until I saw my walls swell with girls.com drawings.
When I returned to Cooper Union, I knew I would be eager to grow girls.com out of the boundaries set by my own hands and bring in other people who could expand what it meant to be girls.com. Hence the proposal in your hands. I have talked to twelve of my classmates who I believe are exploring ideas central to the girly image that can and should inform a larger way of thinking in the world. We are working to construct a small four sided, roofless, ADA compliant cottage that could be installed in one of the Cooper spaces allowing visitors to enter and be swallowed up in a world of girlish fantasy and revolt. Outside of the cottage, Ananya Malagi will be performing as a mermaid. Inside drawings and paintings will cover most available wall space to create a totalizing dome of girliness. Visitors when inside will hopefully cry, feeling safe in what I hope will be the space's light of love.
Of course there is a irl (in real internet life) girls.com call girl website with which irl girls.com is not affiliated with. On an interesting note, irl girls.com professes to connect you with ladies in your neighborhood, a goal that irl girls.com takes and carries in a very different direction.
text by Ossie Ross , 2022
MERMAIDS
Durational performance by Ananya Malagi and Jonelle JustinaPhotos Courtesy of Katie Hyunah Park