Friday 26 February 2010

Is Objectification Always Bad?

I wondered this as I looked into a shop window, in Santa Paula, a small town in California that was my home for 10 months, with an 80% Mexican population. The window display was filled with Catholic figurines, like the Pope, Saint John Paul II with Mother Theresa. There were also a variety of Jesus on the cross figures, heavily decorated. I noticed that the Jesus figures were androgynous in both their facial features and the shape of their bodies. Utterly attractive, they seemed to embody both a masculine and a feminine perfection. It was as though the sexual availability of the naked flesh, and his tragic skin lacerations made the Jesus figure a fantasy space for everyone. It was then that I wondered if offering oneself up for objectification could ever be considered as a generous act.

Wednesday 17 February 2010

Jemima Stehli

Jemima Stehli has taken up the position of the stripper in her photographs, whilst also locating questions of power in the artworld within a voyeuristic framework. In her series Strip (1999) she stands with her back to the camera, in front of a seated male, identified only by his job title, for example, ‘Critic’, ‘Writer’, ‘Curator’ or ‘Dealer’. A long cable release is visible in the male’s hand and in each photograph Stehli is in a different state of undress; caught in the act of stripping. The precise moment the photograph was taken during this private strip is controlled by the seated male, his power doubled through the status of his role in the artworld. And yet, he is the pawn within Stehli’s game. It is she that has created the scenario, it’s her concept, her brain, her skill and her body being displayed. She is active. The seated male is unable to not look, he must play the stooge. It is his level of satisfaction or discomfort that we see in the photograph. Is that us, the viewer looking at ourselves?

Saturday 13 February 2010

Me and Laura

Laura Mulvey’s essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ became some kind of remedial text applied with frequency to my impasse at CalArts. This well written and convincing text served to make me feel guilty about what I wanted to do in practice. It also became a gateway to Kaplan, Doanne, de Lauritis and Modeleski. I needed to make work and I had to read a lot of material in a short space of time. The voices merged into one and I became alienated and overwhelmed by their high minded approach. However, I was attracted to their certainties, the tone of voice so authoritative and sure. The tone and their attachment of the spectacle and pleasure in film which they actively disavow becomes something ripe for parody. The question is whether or not this is something I want to explore in my work.

Thursday 4 February 2010

Why I am not a dancer

Dancing has been my hobby for some 25 years. Over the last ten years I have considered my role in dance as a participant outside the normal trajectory. I am not professional-dancer material and so a career within it could not open up for me. Having performed on the Sheffield City Hall stage in the biannual dancing school shows, and then to collect my BA (Hons) degree, I perceived my interests converging in a rather interesting location.

With a chance encounter with some photographs, my art practice shifted to investigate some of the interesting problems I observed through my dancing. With my experience of wearing the most day-glo kitsch outfits as part of a line of dancers my perspective on spectacle is one of first hand experience as well as that of the well-informed spectator. I imagine myself performing as I watch dancers because I have performed.

When I went to CalArts to study, my regular dance classes ceased. For the first time in many years I did not have a regular dance practice. The pressures of the environment meant I lived in my brain, and I began to really investigate my stake in thoughts on the body, from an outsider position.

I am very happy to report I have now found some very challenging classes and I am confronting the reoccurring preoccupations in my art practice along side a regular dance practice.