Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based poet and artist whose work deals with popular culture, gender, and digital media who will feature as Poet-In-Residence for five weeks (starting 3 August), including the Queensland Poetry Festival.
She is the author of several books of poetry, including 'E! Entertainment', a book of transcriptions of reality TV shows, and 'The Ravenous Audience'. She is founding editor of the online journal 'Gaga Stigmata', and her forthcoming collaborative book of poetry, 'Abra', is an interactive iPad app and artist’s book. 'Abra', a living text, received an NEA grant.
“I am really looking forward to working with the poetry and larger communities of Brisbane. I can’t wait to create the next iteration of my performance project, 'Hello Selfie', with local poets and other Aussies who identify as men, exploring themes of Australian masculinity and the significance of the selfie in gender identity formation and as it relates to body image. I can’t wait to do workshops with the community on pop culture and poetry, playing with topics not normally seen as 'poetic' such as reality TV, celebrity, and the Kardashians. And I really can’t wait to visit hanging rock,” says Kate.
These are Kate's Top 5 reality TV shows (all reference US versions):We Live In Public
'We Live In Public' is actually not a reality TV show, it’s a documentary about artist/ entrepreneur Josh Harris who arranged for a bunch of artists live in an underground bunker in NYC where their every move from fighting to eating to fucking to sleeping to using the bathroom was filmed 24/7. He also was the first person to film himself (and his girlfriend) on a webcam 24 hours a day, with an audience actively watching and interacting through chat. I love 'We Live In Public' because it reveals that reality TV started as an art experiment, and also shows how much the genre hasn’t lived up to its potentials for exploring reality from every angle. Also, it’s interesting to me how many of us have willingly participated in our own surveillance from the beginning.{youtube}_XSTwfdFwIY{/youtube}
Frank The Entertainer feat. Ann Hirsch
Ann Hirsch is a US performance artist and friend of mine. She went on this show, which is a low budget VH1 dating show, kind of the lowest of the low of the reality TV world. The conceit is that this guy, Frank, lives in his parents’ basement, and he is looking for love. Ann broke the show by slipping out of character in an episode where she was supposed to 'win' this contest crooning a love song about how Frank likes to sleep in (the contest was rigged). Instead she sang a rap full of expletives and got kicked off. Ann revealed the ways in which characters on reality TV shows — and, subsequently, in our 'IRL' lives — are pigeonholed and stereotyped, and she broke out of that stereotype and paid the price.{youtube}isY_dLabquM{/youtube}
The Real World (early seasons)
'The Real World' was such an important show in its early incarnations, I feel, because they were still experimenting a lot with the genre then and taking risks. The diversity of the cast and the show’s exploration of themes that affected young people, such as: sex, AIDS, death, substance abuse, abortion, etc. — made it really groundbreaking. Growing up, my family was conservative Evangelical Christian and so I had to sneak-watch 'The Real World'. I was obsessed.{youtube}9qJFW6M_Vh0{/youtube}
The Hills
'The Hills' is one of my all-time favorite reality TV shows because it's got meta. I remember the first time I saw it, on a TV in Planned Parenthood, and I was like 'what the hell is this?' It didn’t look like a reality TV show, but the way they were talking, with all the mumblecore, didn’t sound like a scripted show. The final episode of 'The Hills', when a grip rolls away the Hollywood sign, is one of the most brilliant episodes of a TV show I’ve ever seen. I love how the producers weren’t afraid to show that all reality is a construction, and also that those people we think are so stupid aren’t actually so stupid (I’ve always said Paris Hilton is very smart to let people think she is so stupid). I love it when reality implodes on itself like that.{youtube}Y0G0guPtSSc{/youtube}
The Bachelor
'The Bachelor' is one of my current favorite reality shows because it reveals so much about US culture. Our obsession with the Disney fairy tale wedding, the ways in which we still idealise the myth of romantic love, how willing we are to humiliate ourselves in public. How we love to compete, and in particular to pit women against one another. The fact that we now turn our nuptials over to the surveillance state instead of to the church is also interesting to me. So many of these 'Bachelor' pairings fail, the striving toward this ideal that is out of reach. I recently applied to be on the show — it’s the one I most want to go on!{youtube}95oBols_HOI{/youtube}
The Queensland Poetry Festival takes place at the Judith Wright Centre, 28-30 August.
