Penny slinger

 Interview by Summer Bowie

Art Direction by Bernhard Willhelm

Portrait by Bil Brown

Styling Van Van Alonso

A lot of people say that Penny Slinger has disappeared. The truth is just the opposite. She has gone everywhere: psychically, spiritually, and psychologically. In her iconic book of collage works, An Exorcism, one can see little remaining evidence from a durational performance that edged on exceedingly treacherous and unsustainable territory. In this psychosexual investigation, she spent the better part of a decade documenting her voyage of self psychoanalysis using an old derelict mansion in the Northamptonshire countryside, which she and filmmaker Peter Whitehead filmed and photographed as her set.  On another set, Penny was part of an all-woman troupe called Holocaust, who came to work in an almost violently intimate capacity. After a tragic series of events that are delicately laid out in Slinger’s new documentary, Penny Slinger, Out of the Shadows, the cast decided to abandon the project and decompress from time spent buried deep in the shadows of their unconscious minds, and thus all but one surfaced back to the streets of London. Whitehead had taken up falconry and Slinger later emerged with a book of 99 collages published with a grant from historian, poet and benefactor Roland Penrose’s Elephant Trust. Indeed, Slinger takes influence from the Jungian approach to Surrealism, led by Max Ernst and Man Ray. Looking at Penny Slinger’s early collage works of the ‘70s is a little bit like looking at your own translation of a Rorschach test. Her films and three-dimensional works are evocative and uncanny in a way that feels like the surreality of a childhood dream, recalling the work of Leonora Fini or Luis Buñuel.

After leaving England, Slinger traveled through India with her then-partner Nik Douglas, discovering Hindu and Buddhist Tantra, returning to create works together such as The Secret Dakini Oracle book and card deck, an expansive series of collages that mark the beginning of a continued exploration in what she refers to as the awakening of the feminine. She also published other books, such as Mountain Ecstasy and Sexual Secrets, the Alchemy of Ecstasy. In each, she makes an increasingly prodigious attempt to translate Eastern sexual mysticism for the Western audience, the latter of which has been translated into many languages and sold worldwide.  Following travels in India and living in New York, in 1979 Slinger moved to the Caribbean, and spent the next fifteen years exploring the islands and the spirit of the Arawak Indians who once inhabited them.

I sat down with Penny in the bank vault turned apartment that she was soon to inhabit in downtown Los Angeles. Unsure of what kinds of exorcisms or otherwise transformative experiences may soon be encapsulated in this space, Slinger starts a new chapter in a new city after several decades spent making digital collage work, hosting a wealth of performance art projects at her former home in Boulder Creek, California, and after half a year spent traveling throughout Asia and the Hawaiian islands. We discuss her take on feminism, counterculture, the spiritual side of her practice, and the arc of her career as it comes full circle. 

SUMMER BOWIE: I know that you're often labeled as a feminist surrealist and Surrealism is certainly a strong aspect of your early work, but can you give a rudimentary explanation of the ‘divine feminine’ and how it relates to your current work?

PENNY SLINGER: I was really looking at the waking of the feminine. Now she's waking up, and how are we going to embrace this energy? I would say that we're all male and female within, it's not one thing or the other. The atrophy of the feminine has been damaging to men as well because it's part of their nature. A part that they haven't been able to express. And in the end, the definitions of gender are limiting. It's just trying to look at certain ways of being, whether you think you have to go out there and conquer and dominate, or whether you think you can work with collaboration and cooperation and a symbiotic interrelationship of things. So, as the feminine is coming into prominence, I've been particularly interested over the recent years in the divine feminine, the more refined, alchemized qualities, like the power of compassion. It can heal so much. Passion is one thing, but compassion is like the water that quells and cools the fire that can get out of control with just passion in control. As the disenfranchised finds a voice, let’s see it come through with some real wisdom.

BOWIE: When you finally finished An Exorcism, the film that you were to make with Peter Whitehead, which instead became a series of collages, do you feel like that exorcism marked a transition into discovering the divine feminine?

SLINGER: Well, right, definitely it was a long work. I was working on that for seven years. It was a deep probing into the nature of self and what influences that, both culturally and intimately. And during that time is when I actually discovered tantra. It's sad because I almost don't like to say "tantra" now because of how it's become just known as the religion of sex, but to me it's so much more. It's just a way of treating all of life, how to dissolve boundaries between flesh and spirit. So from that point, I embarked on immersing myself in those teachings to try and understand more about it and I did feel like it was an evolution from Surrealism. That the super realism, and I'm not talking about hyperrealism, but it's like taking, say, a bird-headed being that you see in Surrealism. In this case it's not representing this energy that you've dragged up from your unconscious realms, or your dreams, it's actually representing a divine liberated state of being. It just felt so absolutely natural and perfect that that was where to go. From the Surrealism into the tantra. From intense self scrutiny into exploring super consciousness. And then when I met my next partner in the mid-seventies, Nik Douglas, that became my period of immersing myself on this path. So, I did come out from that one cycle into the next cycle as tantra provided just the right tools to delve into the essence of the divine feminine.

BOWIE: And is that what led you to your travels through India?

SLINGER: Yes, yes. When I met Nik. He'd been living in India and he took me. I'd wanted to go a long time.

BOWIE: Can you talk a little bit about the 64 Dakinis and this sort of mandala—does it serve as a guide into finding the divine feminine?

SLINGER: So I've developed this oracle that takes inspiration from the 64 Yogini Temples that flourished in areas like Orissa in India, particularly during the 9th through 11th century. The Yoginis have animal heads and bird heads and multiple arms. They're amazing beings. It was so exciting and inspiring and I said, "Oh, I want to do a 21st-century version of this." So, we did one version when I was with Nik, together, at the end of the seventies, and then later, in this century, I worked on bringing through the fully personified form. The Dakinis mirror the feminine wisdoms that are potential within us all. By creating an oracle system, it allows the most appropriate of those energies to be delivered to the one who is consulting. So, it is a very direct transmission.

BOWIE: I want to ask about some of your other pervasive influences, because growing up in Great Britain, Max Ernst was a major influence and you are contemporaries with Linder Sterling. So, there were these very Western surrealist influences in your work, and then there was this transition into the Eastern influence, and then of course the Caribbean Arawak Indians. Do you feel like there are connections or relations between these periods of your work that defy basic geography?

SLINGER: Oh definitely, yes. It's like a thread, you know. Linder came on the scene a bit after me and picked up some threads to weave her own designs. Those of Max Ernst inspired mine. In the tapestry of our lives, there are many colors and many threads, and the choices you make decide the pattern that's going to come through. For me, life has presented different opportunities, and I’ve always fully immersed myself in whatever I've been doing. When I discovered tantra, a lot of the art was actually to do with, "How do I share what I've just discovered?" And, that's when I did six hundred-odd drawings for Sexual Secrets.

So, then when I was in the islands, coming into the field of the Arawak Indians who used to be there—all their energy was still there. This whole Amerindian culture really spoke to me in spirit so strongly. And so, in making my tribute to them, I was making a tribute to what is culture and how can that be understood and incorporated into our current world view to transform it and create humanity’s sustainability.

BOWIE: The works you created in the Caribbean are not very widely known. Can you describe what you were doing there exactly?

SLINGER: I was in love with the island and the vibration there. I found that culturally, a lot of the people on the island didn’t even know there had been Indians living there before. So, I made murals for the airport, I did work with the archaeological society, and helped evolve that. Many of the paintings that I made ended up staying on the island so the energy and spirits of the Arawak are living there. It was just what I felt called to do when I was there. It was like a mini career inside my other career because it’s different. All the pieces—it’s like a mosaic, they all fit together. I do remember the statement my teacher made, the head of my department in Chelsea Art School, when I left and they gave me a first-class honor and said, “You’ve been such a load of trouble and we didn’t know what you were doing half the time, but when we saw your exhibition, it all came together as a celebration. We had to give you a first-class honors.” That’s really like the curve of my life. I can see how all the pieces are all a part of one larger tapestry but, as yet, the fine art world hasn’t embraced it all. It has just decided to reexamine some of the earlier work.

BOWIE: In your earlier work, you can really feel a certain hostility towards social bondage, toward the patriarchy, and then in this work that you made in the Caribbean, and a lot of these more Vedic works that came later, it all feels like this celebration of your feminine power. It’s no secret that the art world tends to be more interested in that earlier work, but do you feel that it’s because people prefer to hold on to the hostility?

SLINGER: We are in a different phase now than when I was doing my early work. My hostility, if one can call it that, was towards all the things that confine and trap us and prevent us living to our full potential. Although we have made progress in the areas I address, I think we still have a long way to go.

For me now, in my art, having gone through all these different waves, I’ve now come back to a mode of expression that ties in very directly to the earlier work and to the themes that I started then, with the head boxes and the three-dimensional assemblages. And then, the photo collage that I’ve been working on at the moment is a kind of stark black and white, instead of this technicolor world that I went into for a while, back into this more pared-down expression and the language has more reference to Surrealism. It’s connected to the early work, so there’s an arc, and I’m hoping that it will form a connective tissue that people will be able to see from what they have been recognizing to what I’m doing now. It’s the same energy but at a different stage of evolution. I hope I allow people to see I am a living, working artist, and not just someone who disappeared or went off into the wild and never came back. I’ve been working all the time, I just haven’t been back until now. I’m hoping in time, all the rest of the body of work can be swept in, seeing the relevance of these other pieces to the entire grand design.

BOWIE: Your documentary, Penny Slinger, Out of the Shadows, was just released. What does it feel like looking back over time at all of your work?

SLINGER: It really only goes up to pre-tantra times. The period that it covers is all my feminist-Surrealist period. But it’s good because it says very clearly, I disappeared but I didn’t disappear. So hopefully this will make people recognize that and if I can get the latest work out, then it will help me to fulfill the other part of what I want to bring through. The whole empowerment of the feminine and the whole sacredness of sexuality, these things are things that were big drips of nectar dropped into the pool of culture because they weren’t there at the time. My current essence drop is about the relevance of someone who has gathered the wisdom of experience, rather than their irrelevance in our society. You know, the cult of youth, I have felt quite a while that I need to try and challenge this paradigm. That’s what I want to do now with myself at this point in my life, and my work, and my body, and my art. I want to put it out there as that drip.

BOWIE: What does it mean to be counterculture in today’s era, as opposed to the beginning of your career when you were a symbol for the counterculture in the UK.

SLINGER: That’s a very interesting question and I was actually just thinking about that very subject.  A lot much has changed and not only are there pretty blurred lines around a current definition, but there are a lot of people out there pushing boundaries in so many ways that it’s hard to see where the real threshold is. Where are the areas that can be provocatively and meaningfully addressed that can elicit real change? Because ultimately that is what any counterculture has to have at its core. How can my expression shift the current unsatisfactory dynamic? I have always stood for freedom of expression and I like to break new ground in consciousness and manifestation. So, I think that does and always will put me on the cutting edge. But as all of culture is in major crisis in relation to its future, artists and visionaries are really being called to come up with what are really relevant countercultural offerings.

But counterculture in the essence, it’s not necessarily something that you choose. It’s just something that you are. I remember my school teacher when I was eleven who said that there were thirty-six children in this class, thirty-five going one way, and Ms. Slinger going the other.

BOWIE: It’s just innate.

SLINGER: It’s just innate.

BOWIE: You may have a point about that. I want to ask you about technology because you really have embraced technology throughout your career, and now you’ve been working with digital collage for some time. Over the course of your life, has this transition to working with technology been easier with art than it has with everyday life, or vice versa?

SLINGER: Art is definitely my guiding light. I didn’t get on a computer until I was over In California, and before I was kind of against computers. And then art put this big shining light over it beaming, “Oh, look at Photoshop! Look at all these wonderful collage tools you could use! All the things you wanted to do!” I had stopped doing collage because it didn’t have the capability of doing these things like transparency, overlays, and scale. I literally got on the computer, taught myself Photoshop and learned what I needed to learn about the computer. I’m certainly not a wiz-kid technician, but I needed to use the tools because they are the tools of our age. I’ve always let myself be on the cutting edge of things, not just back then, but always. How could you resist it? As for everyday life, how can anyone avoid the incorporation of technology these days?

BOWIE: Do you see the influence of your work on some of the younger artists that are working in digital collage today.

SLINGER: Yes, yes.

BOWIE: I see it everywhere. How does that feel?

SLINGER: Well, I actually think that collage is the main artistic expression of the masses these days. Think of advertising, think of videos—it’s moving collage now. It’s all forms of collage really. So much as everyone can be a photographer now, collage is really the mode of expression. It’s become the darling of our times. It’s strange that photography doesn’t have the rarefied ethos that it did when I was younger in the darkroom and having a camera was “a thing.” On one level that’s wonderful because I believe everybody should be able to create if possible—not just artists. But at the same time there’s a little bit of a dilution of the artist side. And one of my pet peeves on social media is when work gets shown but not attributed. So you see this plethora of work everywhere, and yet nobody knows who did anything. It really diminishes it. For me, everyone can make a pretty picture. Everyone can make a shocking picture. It’s about the intention that’s behind that. The path and the thread through the labyrinth that it’s describing. It keeps everything very superficial and then there’s no depth, there’s no lineage, no roots, and how can the tree really flourish and have succulent fruit when it can’t suck from its roots?

BOWIE: Very true. The loss of this decorum is not just about preserving egos, it’s actually about education and the preservation of history. Do you feel like there are any mediums that you see yourself moving into after digital collage or do you feel like, right now, you’re doing everything that you need to do with it?

SLINGER: For years, while I was doing my events, I was working in the form of moving collage, in making videos and that’s something that I’ve always loved doing, and hope to continue doing because the thing about filmmaking in any form is that it encompasses a lot of other art in it. I love it as a medium, and the new forms of immersive media. I’m about to start working on a production to be shown in a dome.

BOWIE: Do you have a general disposition when you make the work, or does it fluctuate depending on the type of work you’re making?

SLINGER: Definitely fluctuates. When I was younger, I remember doing one work, a painting, I had just played Bach’s organ Fugue over and over again because I just wanted the mood and vibration of that going in. So, there’s a kind of meditation that happens with every kind of art expression, and it’s different with a painting, or on the computer. Of course, artists are moody people, so you’re going to be up and down, but that’s why I like tantra—it doesn’t say you’ve got to have this middle path without too much of this and too much of that. I allow myself an emotional palette, but luckily I feel like I have developed the tools to shift energy if I need to. Basically, I’m at my happiest when I’m creating and I work from that core.

BOWIE: Do you have any rituals that you practice before getting into your work?

SLINGER: I’ve had different ones for different kinds of works in my time, and certainly when we were doing the Dakini manifestations that was all one big ritual really. But mine is very informal these days, and very spontaneous I suppose, because I am always thinking about meditating on my work. It’s not like I ever stop working.

BOWIE: Do you think there is one effective way to channel the divine feminine? Or can you give one example?

SLINGER: Well one effective way—you know I had 64 forms! There’s so many different ways, but the main thing I would say is to find a way to still your own mental prattle. Get yourself out of the way and work on being open and available. There’s a saying that the divine can’t come unless they’re called—and we forget that. It’s setting that intention, setting that ground. It’s just between you and the energy, and finding ways where you can get your mind quiet enough, and wide enough—and ask and ask! I did this when I was recently in Hawaii. I went to Maui after leaving my property and every night I’d go to bed and say, “Just help me empty my mind, so that I’m able to receive what the land and the spirits here want to give me.” And I guess, after about a week of doing that, I got that. (laughing)