Ever wish you were a bicycle seat?

Last week was the World Naked Bike Ride, the annual world-wide protest against oil dependency and car culture, opposing indecent exposure to automobile emissions and celebrating the power and individuality of our bodies. Naturally, I was there.

We covered much of the downtown core: the West End, Robson Street, Gastown, and Granville Street, as well as the Burrard Bridge, Granville Island, and Fourth Avenue out to Jericho. I would estimate that there were about 200 riders altogether. Interestingly, two people phoned me later to tell me that they saw me on the Global TV news, though my face wasn’t visible. It’s a bit of an odd thing to have a recognizable ass.

Along Denman Street   (Photo credit: Cynodesme)

I love unsettling the uptight, so having a busload of blue-haired Pennsylvanian Baptist tourists getting a glimpse of something more interesting than the damn Steam Clock is quite satisfying. But I think the best part is seeing people of all ages and body types come out and expose themselves to a world that constantly tells them that they are not OK if they don’t have a certain look. Furry or hairless, young or old, muscular or sagging, fat or skinny, scarred or smooth – all kinds of different people had the courage to reject the negative messages and just be who they are. And that can only be a good thing.

“Less Gas, More Ass”   (Photo credit: Cynodesme)

This wasn’t my only exposure of late, however. Besides attending my usual log at Wreck Beach, I was recently a participant in a piece of performance art staged by Montreal artist Johannes Zits at the Grunt Gallery. Johannes had performed this piece in several cities around the world, and this was the first time in Vancouver.Before an audience of about thirty, Johannes had four of us – two men and two women – select images from a stack of magazines. I was the first one on, so I got naked and Johannes painted the front of me, from the shoulders to the knees, with a blue-coloured gel paint. He then pressed me against a canvas that had been hung on the wall, leaving a blue splotch representing my form on the canvas.

I then went to the shower to get the paint cleaned off before it dried, and Johannes used the images that I had selected from the magazines to cover the blue paint on the canvas. While he was doing this, a wall-mounted camera in the washroom conveyed my shower onto a giant screen in the gallery, where the audience could watch me scrub blue paint out of my pubic hair while they sipped their cocktails.

After my shower, I assisted with various tasks, such as videotaping the other participants and drying the canvases, and socialised with some of the audience. As the last step of the evening, I painted Johannes, who then applied himself to the canvas.

Here I am after removing myself from the canvas: