There is an article in Vice entitled, The Whore of Babalon by Liz Armstrong that introduces
and interviews a girl named Labanna Babalon that has stuck with me this past
week. She seems totally
insane/drugged-out at first glance but there is actually something really
interesting going on. She
apparently took A LOT of acid for consecutive days and started to record
herself and her cohorts doing various acid-drippy, sexually loose expressions
of self. It is kooky, and juvenile
at degrees, but oddly it feels like an honest assertion of a philosophy of life,
living, and perceiving that may be too off the edge for a gal like me but it is
nonetheless tantalizing.
Labanna looks like she is in her early-ish 20s and she looks
like a typical white girl from somewhere in America but her clothes, which look
like raver-Wal-Mart-chic and her zeal and expertise in booty-popping her very
well shaped posterior makes her above average. She has sleepy eyes that seem to be drugged-out possibly all
the time, but they aren’t crazy-eyes.
There is a blankness to them but also a Bambi like vulnerability. In the interview she talks about
aliens, 5D, sexual cult goddess but more then anything the idea of love and
women being the transmitters of this love was the most interesting thing. She says:
The
Tree of Life is the internet, and the apple with the bite out of it is
literally the computer. Mainly what I’m doing with the whole sexuality thing is trying to take things
like shame and brainwashing ideas about beauty and a woman’s “place” and
use them in a positive way to combat the forces of domineering people.
Her use of sexuality and her body is next level. There is an overtness about it. Like in her video La Porsha where she has My Little Pony like extensions that
she is braiding outside near a rose bush and she turns herself knowingly in a
way to profile her backside. Even
in this though there is a mix of self-awareness, curiosity, and a lack of
inhibition that is not about narcissism or the need for the male gaze for
purposes of validation of self.
The way that she engages with the viewer is also very
interesting. It is direct, and
there is a total awareness of being watched and she is not remarking or
disqualifying it in any way but almost using it to cast spells on whomever is
watching. It truly feels like a
portal into a land of bizarre space and time when you watch some of her
videos. There is a heightened
sense of performance and clichéd dramatics in some of her videos but others mix
this quite interestingly like her Underground New Age Order that has her lying on her stomach with a white
facial mask and her big eyes gazing out as she recites a manifesto-cum-spoken
word poetry about this Underground New Age Order. She is like an actress playing herself playing another self
that is her true self. Everything
feels like a complicated ball that both self generates and cannibalizes all at
the same time. It’s all very
odd.
In addition to her more off the cuff videos there is a music
video called TH3R3S R3ALLY NO 1 LYKE ME
direcetd by Angelina Dreem that has Labanna in a hotel room eating pizza,
popping her booty on a bed, having friends with hair extension pasties dance
and chill and a bath tub full of red blood water. The “song” is her singing/talking over lazy beats and
occasionally there are funny admissions like “yes I sell sex” and “I get
fucking freaked out by myself” but there is something overall a bit sad about
the video. Somehow it makes her whole
thing seem goofy, indulgent without purpose and little girl lost. It is a music video though and those
function much differently then a more intimate self-recording but this video
does feel a bit reductive to the actually interesting aura that Labanna seems
to posses.
Regardless of any failure or success of any of her videos,
there is something definitely potent going on. Her use of herself and the way that she is using sexuality,
femaleness, vulgarity, insanity, mysticism, and drugs does feel like it is, in
it’s own way, dissolving this structure that is society, that is maleness, that
is learned control over oneself to be a nice, productive, obedient person. Her being a young, pretty woman is
totally a part of the success of this, but the idea that anyone can be a
transmitter and embodiment of another dimension of reality and perception is a
fantastic possibility.
