NICOLE PASULKA: How did you come to have both a personal and a professional relationship with Amber Doll?

AMBER HAWK SWANSON: The project, from the beginning––and I think I’ve held true to it––is about wanting to embody victim and victimizer simultaneously. It’s what I’ve held onto during all of the different phases of the work. At first, I was really attached to what I was beginning to understand would be the academic parts of my project with Amber Doll. But at some point, the personal side, which included desiring a RealDoll for many of the same reasons other doll owners/lovers desire their dolls, just seeped in.

NP: As far as your work was concerned, you wanted something to act out on?

AHS: I wanted something that would be an extension of self, a negotiation of self and, more than anything, something that would look like whatever it is that victim and victimizer would look like if conceptually merged and placed in a single frame. I knew I wanted to embody each role, so I needed a double of myself. More than just a double, I needed a sexually available double of myself. Of course, it had to be a RealDoll, since they are known as the “Cadillac” of sex dolls. At the beginning, it couldn’t have been any more academic in my mind.

NP: So the project started professionally and then became personal?

AHS: It wasn’t until I’d already sent out proposals and put things in motion for my RealDoll project that I started to feel an affinity with the [online] community of men who own RealDolls. I started looking forward to owning Amber Doll in a personal way. I also changed the writing in my proposals to reflect the fact that I was actually buying clothes for her and preparing my home for two. I was surprised to find myself changing the proposals to incorporate that kind of “lived performance” because up until that point I hadn’t made that kind of work. It was a strange combination of experiencing the desire and being aware of the desire in a way I knew would influence the work.

NP: How should we understand the trajectory of your relationship then? Were you girlfriends?

AHS: I’ve heard people interpret [the relationship between Amber Doll and me] as flipping perceived gender roles within queer butch/femme relationships on their heads, [in regards to the high femme gender presentation both Amber Doll and I seem to uphold]. I think that could be true in many of the scenarios we shot. But there are others where that’s not the case, where I’ve played the role of a stagehand of sorts, and happened to take on more masculine codes in order to do so while she remained undeniably feminine. I am able to change my gender presentation but she seemingly cannot. That whole spectrum is explored in the project. It’s part of my life and it seeps into the work.

NP: Is she your collaborator?

AHS: At the beginning, I really thought of her as my collaborator. I always used language like “we” and “us.” But now I’m taking all the credit. If it actually were a collaboration, she would be upset with me about that. [laughs]. After our wedding reception, where I was surprised by the way our guests “explored” her, I decided to treat her like the replica of myself that she is. I sort of said, “OK, I’m going to place you in these potentially vulnerable situations and you have no choice in the matter.”

NP: It’s interesting that the wedding was what turned you two into separate entities.

AHS: I know! Honestly, I had received a grant and wanted to use part of it to celebrate the project and my relationship with Amber Doll. Everyone in my world was like, “We have to see your doll.” It was the six-month anniversary of her birth and of our Las Vegas wedding, so I threw a big party and screened To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: The Making of Amber Doll documentary. I had my photo tech assistant shooting portraits and a few other tech assistants shooting video of what happened when people interacted with the doll on their own. I didn’t expect what happened. The guests were all people who know me personally, which, for the most part, included a bunch of queers and artists. I thought people would pose for some pictures and drink a whole lot of champagne, but it ended up being so much more. I was like, “here’s my wife, she’s gorgeous and not broken in any way, yet” and people pulled her tongue out and looked up her skirt. There were piles of people on her at once. It was a bit shocking to me at the time.

NP: It sounds like that influenced the direction of the rest of the project.

AHS: Before, we were doing photographic sketches—but they just weren’t working. They were telling me a lot about this idea of victim and victimizer that I was trying to pursue, but the wedding reception was a turning point. I saw the potential in allowing other people into the project, at least in the part of the project that involved violent fantasy fulfillment.



NP: It’s funny to hear you mention that the wedding reception was full of people you know, because from the photos—especially where you and Amber Doll are cutting the cake—it looks like a very heteronormative wedding. The social acceptance of you and Amber Doll portrayed in this photo was immediately striking.

AHS: I was so obsessed with getting every detail to be heteronormative and/or Barbie-like. What would Barbie want at her wedding reception? Lots of pink and baby blue, the cake had pearled decorations. Nothing that I would pick with my girlfriend, but something I’d maybe pick with some of my former sorority sisters.

Last summer my girlfriend and I went to the wedding of one of my former sorority sisters. My girlfriend’s gender-queer appearance stood out among the other wedding guests, and made negotiating the space an interesting challenge. I don’t mean to say wedding receptions across the board are uncomfortable.

NP: But they can be horribly uncomfortable places. I’ve been the weird girl in a suit at awkward weddings before.

AHS: There’s something about [my girlfriend’s and my] presence at this sorority wedding that was disrupting social codes. And my wedding to Amber Doll was also disrupting social codes—not in exactly the same way, but somehow in a similar way.

NP: So then, is this project explicitly about sexual identity or the way sexual identity can be disruptive?

AHS: My intention of embodying victim/victimizer happened at the same time that I was craving companionship as we discussed earlier. While I wanted to make artwork with Amber Doll, I also really believed that I would be getting companionship with her in the same way that friend of mine and fellow doll-owner Davecat is partnered with his doll. I felt like I was picking out a girlfriend, but certainly in a non-traditional way.

NP: We imagine that the typical “real doll owner” is a lonely, straight man. Does it seem hard for people to believe that you actually wanted a relationship with Amber Doll?

AHS: As I was waiting for Amber Doll, I was saving my hair because I heard that RealDoll owners saved their hair to glue it in the pubic area. I also got excited initially that people were dressing their dolls up. It sounds so much more fun than it is because silicone is so hard to dress. It’s certainly an art project and it has always been, but I was single at the time. I knew it was crazy ordering the doll and spending all the money, but I was really excited about it and all of the minute details of doll ownership, like hair, clothes, and cleaning. There was a community of mostly men I was interacting with indirectly. There’s a whole community of people who love dolls. It’s sort of less about the dolls and more about each other in some ways. It ends up looking like [a lot of other kinds of] fandom. I thought I was going to get all this companionship out of the doll—I enjoyed every second of waiting for her and then getting her—but what also happened was that I formed personal connections online, and it could have been about cooking, you know. I’d never speak for everyone in the community. I’m sensitive about that. But definitely for me that’s what it was about.

NP: So I can’t help but wonder about your sex life with the doll. And when I think about that, I understand that this project invites the same sort of detached voyeurism or preoccupation that non-normative relationships often encourage in people who feel outside of them or have no experience with gay or lesbian sex and relationships.

AHS: All the time I was waiting for her, I was so excited to strap on and have her strap on and I was imagining all the things that would be possible. I was intent to enjoy Amber Doll separate from any project. The whole time I was waiting, people would ask me how I planned to get sexual pleasure from this doll. Female RealDolls are created for sex with men, but for me getting off with the doll felt really possible.

NP: Isn’t that the way people often question lesbian sex? Asking how you do it?

AHS: Yes. Totally, and my ultimate fantasy was Amber Doll. But when I watched her “get made” I’m not going to say that killed it, but there was little mystery left. I got her and had my first night with her and did not find her sexy, I’m sad to report. I didn’t find her vagina sexy. All three of her orifices are ribbed, but I don’t understand how her vagina could provide pleasure because it is really big and wide—like beer bottle big. It felt disconnected to me. It was like putting my hand in a hole. I was determined the whole time to get off having sex with Amber Doll, but it did not happen. In fact, she’s a virgin. I explored her vagina, and looked her all over because I was so in shock to finally have her, but I never ended up having sex with her, nor has anyone.

NP: You were just in Miami for your show at Locust Gallery. What was Miami like for you and Amber Doll?

AHS: Part of the mission of Locust Gallery is get artists to do site-specific work. I decided to shoot photographs and video not only in Miami, but also at a popular Florida theme park. My experience in Miami was partly shooting [with Amber Doll] and also meeting folks. A lot of the same things that happen wherever we take Amber Doll happened in Miami. We went to the eXXXotica convention where I didn’t know what to expect, but I was very excited because Girls Gone Wild was going to be there.

NP: What happened when you and Amber Doll hung out with Girls Gone Wild?

AHS: I brought Amber Doll into the Girls Gone Wild area. There were two women posing with whoever walked by. When they saw her, they weren’t quite sure what to do. Eventually, they approached her and there was a mad rush of mostly men with cameras. When the crowd assembled, the girls got into it. They didn’t go as far as we might see on a Girls Gone Wild video, but they were completely interacting with the doll after a few minutes and after more and more people showed up. One of the girls took Amber Doll’s hands and put them in her own hot pants. I didn’t expect them to interact with the doll that way. Eventually, someone who seemed like a bodyguard came over and asked me to leave, so we wheeled her off and hung out at the rest of the convention.

I was really after the Girls Gone Wild footage because I’d previously taken her to a Chicago Bears tailgate and I was thinking of that loosely as a reverse Girls Gone Wild because the “girl,” Amber Doll, is inactive, dead-seeming really, and the men interacting with her are all misbehaving in some cases in order to perform for my camera.



NP: How was the show at Locust?

AHS: The public opening definitely stood out. I had her laid out in a funerary installation. She was in a casket surrounded by fresh flowers. People were able to come close to Amber Doll. Her face and torso, where people might be walking, was surveilled by a camera with a live feed to a monitor on the other side of a free-standing wall. That was the first real-time performance of sorts that I’ve mounted—the viewers became the stars of the final video that they would encounter. It was surprising as an installation, but then it took on this tone of—I keep using this word—violation. I witnessed a different kind of aggression than I’ve noticed in other places when a young man wound up and forcefully punched her in her face.

I spoke with Lori Waxman for a Q&A for the show before the exhibition about how for me it’s all about consent and permission. I was curious about what would happen in these places where there’s a complete lack of permission to touch and be sexual. She’s this RealDoll who gives you this permission in a way, but she’s in this casket carries all the codes of “respect.” He really punched her, and we watched it in the monitor.

NP: Do you have any insight into how and why that happened?

AHS: People often punch her because they want to know how the silicone feels. I see people punch her, and it seems to me it’s to feel the material. It was toward the end of the night. I don’t know if he’d been drinking. We were watching down the hall, on the monitor, we saw him jokingly giving mouth-to-mouth to Amber Doll. I found that funny, but then he just backed up and punched her.

At the end of the night, my girlfriend and I walked to our car. He happened to be walking towards us and he really aggressively flicked us off against our car window. I’m not sure if it was about the installation and the work, or if he was just feeling angry that night. Amber Doll seems to invite that kind of behavior, but I hadn’t seen it in a way where it meant physical harm or damage to her silicone. She is now torn from mouth to jaw.

NP: And there’s no question that this was a violent act?

AHS: Yeah, it seemed really intentional, but then again, I’m kind of facilitating those kinds of actions. People coming through had already seen a series of videos and photographs that document folks “exploring” Amber Doll before encountering the funerary installation. I’m interested in the way that some people can watch the video and think, “Oh, this is awful; I would never do that even to a doll.” Or they’ll think, “I can do that. In fact, the doll is right behind me, I’m going to sock her in the mouth.”

NP: Did you have her face fixed?

AHS: There’s no real way to fix her face, at this point. Her face just doesn’t stay on any longer.

NP: Some people feel like you can enjoy representations of violence expressly because you know they’re not real. It has the thrill, but not the actual fear or repercussions of real violence. So I’m wondering if what happened in Miami is a way of experiencing violence as a representation or if it’s the expression of a latent desire. Does who and what she is give people some kind of permission to do this to her?

AHS: I don’t know. I’m just the puppeteer. But, I’m there, facilitating the permission in some cases. People in some ways do very little and her sexual availability does it all—whether I’m providing alcohol, like at my wedding reception where all of the guests were people who knew me personally from my art and queer communities here in Chicago, or just rolling her somewhere and leaving her with strangers, like at Girls Gone Wild. I don’t even know, in the project as a whole, how much I had to do with facilitating permission, but it ended up being a big part of how I think about the way consent and permission play into the work.