Degree Project: Digital Sketchbook

Reflection 15/03/21: This upcoming period until beginning of Jan was an experimental period, I felt confused with where to go next with film but this helped me zone into projection into the aspects of Mulvey’s essay of the male gaze I was more passionate about.

I wanted to bring my concept back to basics as Mulvey believed women were “displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men” (Mulvey, 1973, p 64)/sexual objects for the opposite sex to both observe and use. I have previously discussed Mulvey’s research was gathered from all male theorist – she used their theories and rewrote it in regards to the display of women in cinema and daily life, through a female POV. Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to explore the way the cinema is presented and how there was “socially established interpretations of sexual difference which controls images” (Mulvey, 1973, p 57) during that time, between male and female – the male having the control. Is this still relevant?

Reflection 14/03/21: YES! Especially in regards to Sarah Everard, killed by a man who used his power of a police man to kill her, this is slightly different but carries the same aspect, men use their power/patriarchy and hierarchy to control, and even kill.

Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema

Mulvey refers to Sigmund Freud’s theory of castration anxiety where “women stand in a patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other” (Mulvey, 2973, p58). Uses Freud’s theory to discover her own, does she believe in Freud’s Penis Envy theory? It’s unsure but it’s something that was brought into the cinema.

Sexual objectification by Mulvey shows the way women are seen as less than and used for the males benefit, both sexually and domestically as this was a clear visual through the female gaze. Mulvey created this essay to speak out for women who were frustrated being under the patriarchal structure of men as “it is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. This is the intent of this article” (Mulvey, 1973, p 59). The cinema is “the satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure” (Mulvey, 1973, p 59), as it what is shown on the cinema is not a true representation of reality – much like what is seen in the mirror as well as online. Mulvey speaks how the cinema is “offers a number of possible pleasures” (Mulvey, 1973, p 59) for the male. She uses the cinema in her exploration of women being portrayed as objects of desires to watch… For MEN. This has been described in response to my work previously.

Reflection 15/03/21: To Bite explores this imagery of women being isolated and sexualised on the screen and in daily life, a singular icing breast representing women as a treat, being bitten and chewed, destroyed by a male.

“The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure” (Mulvey, 1973, p 64), like women are given this role to exhibited and looked at, which Mulvey called “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey, 1973, p 64). “She is isolated, glamorous, on display, sexualised” (Mulvey, 1973, p 64) the story of the cinema always left the women falling in love with the male, therefore becoming “his property” (Mulvey, 1973, p 64) its as though films were trying to continue this patriarchal role onto it’s viewer by glamorising it. My work has been questioned if I am destroying this visual? Or addressing it?

“The cinema seperates the illusion of voyeuristic separation” (Mulvey, 1973, p 64). The viewers feel as though they’re looking in at something without being noticed. Projection was very successful in my CUBED (see below) exhibition and with the use of the bodies gazing back, the viewers said they felt they were being watched while they watched. I aim to alert the viewer that they are being watched, much like how I did with CUBED.

I aim to develop projection further to highlight the voyeurism that comes along with the female form, to evoke emotions of being uncomfortable, the way women feel when being under the control of the male gaze.

Reflection 15/03/21: This was successful reference to my 1-1 with Catinca, what is now worse, the male gaze or the male gaze through the female gaze? This was what was explored within Just a Nibble or Two & To Bite – how will it appear further when it’s projected?

I wanted to address Mulvey’s approach to the camera. It has been described that the camera lens, initially is another form of an eye and the gaze, except this gaze captures everything it sees. “The camera becomes the mechanism for producing an illusion” (Mulvey, 1973, p 68). The lens holds a permanent outlook of that moment in time. If the camera moves, the audience feel as though their eyes are moving. For a male audience it questions if it has only encouraged more sexual objectification by replicating the visual they see in the cinema of a women, in real life. And self surveillance for women due to this objectification of their gender.

I want to address this sexualisation of women’s in my practice creates a clear visual for the viewers to show what it’s like to be a women, showing the effects of a ‘simple’ act of the male gaze upon the female form. I can’t ignore the recognition of other views, always going to be different interpretation, the way they are displayed changes the visual even further. But it’s important to find a clear visual for my concept for me to address what I am trying to explore.

After my formative assessment with Jane, I wanted to continue the exploration of performative art as the feedback was so successful from my group crit 20/11/20. Hannah Wilke did this in her performative work I researched last year L5 which impacted the process of my art practice massively. As Wilke was an influential feminist artist in the 70s, she created Venus Pareve (1982 – 84) which were small figures identical to her own body but out of plaster of Paris. She “presents herself in the role Venus, the Roman goddess of Love, sex and fertility” (WorleyGig, 2018). Women displayed for intimate areas of their body as though the rest of them didn’t matter – sexual objectification. See below.

Hannah Wilke, Venus Pareve, 1982-84.

These figures were then created out of chocolate where Wilke made a production of her eating the chocolate bodies in front of an audience, but wasn’t documented. Created a visual of how women are treated as desirable objects to both look at and eat, there’s this flow onto how women are also consumed by society and men. The women appear “helpless objects of desire” (WorleyGig, 2018). This was where I took inspiration from for Consuming 2 in L5.

Reflection 26/05/21: Relation to the way Valie Export worked with performance and involving the audience within her artwork, the same way as S.O.S below. Using the audiences to make the art work, if Wilke didn’t the artwork wouldn’t be visually successful or have the same meaning, the same way Export’s Tap and Touch Cinema may be unsuccessful and resulting not exploring the same issues. The same with my film To Bite B&W Repeat, if the audience aren’t present no one can be receiving the unusual gaze/discomfort. All artworks need an audience to respond too.

Wilke created another performance piece called S.O.S.—Starification Object Series in 1974–75, see below where “Wilke presents a collection of “performalist self-portraits,” in which she both parodies and dismantles stereotypical representations of “femininity.” She disrupts the pleasure of the gaze by covering her semi-nude body with vaginal-shaped chewing gum, which appear as scars on her flesh.” (Wacks, 2009). Connected to the audience and gave them gum to chew, they returned the gum to Wilke who was topless and “stretched and folded the pliable wads into small, labia-shaped sculptures and stuck them to her skin” (MoMa, 2019). She posed in an editorial-style way for her portraits – relation to Cindy Sherman using self portraiture/dress up.

Hannah Wilke, S.O.S.—Starification Object Series, 1974–75

“Wilke challenged the viewer-voyeur to resolve the tension between revulsion at the sight of the gnashed forms scarring her body and pleasure at being given such access to her beauty” (MoMa, 2019).

• Challenge between the viewer/’object’ in the image disrupting the ‘sexualised’ visual of the body with scars. Wilke is too exploring the beauty in a scarred body and how it is natural, it could be argued that Wilke too works with the female gaze and not just the male gaze.

I liked the hands on approach from her S.O.S series, the connection to the audience when exploiting the male gaze – something I had only touched on in L5, I placed clay bodies around in a room and got people to walk around them – to see how they felt, created this relation to the artwork, the viewer and the experience. I created My Verblist, see below in response to my research from Richard Serra Verblist. I chose words which would exploit the raw visual of the male gaze upon women.

Richard Serra, Verblist, 1968.

I created a breast out of a new material, super soft light air drying clay. I documented myself making the breast to bring in the process element that was successful within my CUBED exhibition, see below.

I then painted the breast to allow for the realism as this seemed to be successful within Only Touch With CLEAN Hands.

Explored visual impact and began ‘To Squeeze’, see below, I liked this graduation of intensity that was present in my previous work and over the course of the film it got quicker and quicker and more destructive like the male gaze/control.

Is there a stronger visual with the use of hand sanitiser? The crushing till the end is like the desperate need to show it’s not quite crushed enough – intense control that society has over women. The material was still wet and it created this sticky appearance, it lost its identity/drastic change from familiarisation and defamiliarisation..

Reflection 28/02/21: Lockdown and Light projections explored this defamilarisation/abstract like approach to the female form, it worked so well in relation to Hollywood cinema glamourising/sexualising the female form with water.

Reflection 14/04/21: And so does Sweet Tooth B&W projected – loose the identity of the breast as its chewed.

Shares a relation to Wilkes S.O.S – squeezing the clay suggests the artist is present in the work. A peer said as there is a female hand present, does it suggest women destroying this control the male gaze has over the female body? And the rep that comes with breasts? Destruction of the sexualisation of women and the new shaping of women today?

As I have aimed to work with performance and projection due to my formative assessment, it’s been a good way of showing my work in situ. We discussed scale of projection to reflect the female form while regarding Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” I took on board the way she spoke about the representation of women in the cinema – used for their looks on screen, observed and voyeured. I wanted to explore this – projection is a whole another material to work with: adjustment of the image, the detail that could be lost if you move the projector, time of day you project, space, angles – these are all new issues for me to challenge.

Experimental films: to see how it projected/worked. I play with the composition of clay breasts/sculptures. I like that they can be both simple or confusing – drastic contrast in emotions for the viewer, like Serra’s films. I was amazed at the colour, I had only used a projector with CUBED before and that was during the day so it was very disappointing.

The projector brought so much more life/movement to the film. The skirting disrupts the film, or does it involve the homey environment more? Reflection 14/04/21: There’s this relation to a ‘homey’ element of my work which we used as a group for Congruous Interim exhibition.

Gave the visual of you are sitting at the cinema – big screen/bright colours. This is the experience I aimed for, to show how women are used for their body on the cinematic screen and life for their “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey, 1973, p) to create a direct visual for the viewers. Reflection 15/03/21: The start of what inspired me to project in a cinema format for Are You Watching? – audience and the stage – was recognised well/mentioned by many different peers.

Creating smaller projections gave the film more context/narrative for that sculpture – seeing is what they have experienced. It becomes a type of story telling which is more personal. This is reflected in the way the cinema works. Christian Metz explored the cinema as being the ‘other mirror’ – suggests people relate to what they may have experienced. The flesh filled the wall projected onto the body, giving it life, colour as though they are reliving this experience for people to see, like an immersive experience.

• Susan spoke of the bodies each have a story but are brought together by the male gaze in my CUBED exhibition. I took this further by placing them individually in front of projection.

Hand and Breast with breast sculptures. I worked with illusion – the projector low on the floor, the hand appeared as if it was laying on the ground. This followed the projection of the breasts as if they were laying on the ground like the breasts have fallen out of the hand. After seeing this I placed the sculpture of the breasts onto the floor to replaced the film with real clay breasts, see image below.

• IDEA: Move projector to domestic settings for women – continue this experimentation to work with different settings. Reflection 01/03/21: Moving the projection around the house made the work more compelling. The kitchen space for Are You Watching? was immersive and wouldn’t have worked the same else where – this took my work up a level.

For my dissertation I am analysing the digitalization of the gaze through time due to social media, and the changes that are present with the way women perceive themselves and others.

Chapter 1, starts off with Jacques Lacan, a French Psychoanalyst (1901-1981), who created the theory of the gaze which was explored in 1964. It can be described as an anxious state of mind stemming from the self-awareness that anyone can be seen and looked at as “the eye objectifies” (Foster, 1983, p 70). This theory was influenced by the mirror stage of psychological development in 1936, meaning the first time a child looks into a mirror and recognises that they have an external appearance of which can be viewed by others. This invites the notion of the gaze.

Christian Metz was a French film theorist (1931-1993) who introduced psychoanalysis into film theory. He believed the cinema to be “other mirror” (Metz, 1982, p 4) as the cinema shows you an unrealistic reality much like how a mirror does. He developed his theories from Jacques Lacan. For this part of my dissertation I have read The Imaginary Signifier which allowed me to get a basis of Metz theories.

Chapter 2, enters the male gaze stage with Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is a British film theorist from the 70s and created the theory the male gaze and explores the representation of women being sexually objectified in the cinema; especially evident in Hollywood cinema. This is what I explored within L5 of my degree and is the theory I always enjoy exploring and often come back too. She became widely acknowledged for her essay “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” in 1973 which inspired female artists to challenge this theory within their artwork. Hal Foster was a strong critic of Mulvey with his essay Return of the Real. And follow onto researching Barbara Kruger & Cindy Sherman.

Next comes Sigmund Freud who believed the sense of being looked back at affected people in the same as castration anxiety. Lacan also believed this and adopted the feelings of castration anxiety and developed them within the irreversible gaze, this is important to note because Laura Mulvey too has used Freud’s theories of castration anxiety when exploring the male gaze, which is questionable due to Freud theories of the male being superior. He created the theories Penis Envy and Scopophilia. Where women are seen less than men because they do not have a penis.

15/03/21: My dissertation has helped fuel my passion to explore the male gaze within my current practice and how power and the gaze effect us women. As this was the basis of what I researched last year within L5, it’s been very influential to revisit it for my dissertation and practice as it’s opened ideas for me to refers back to the male gaze.

Chapter 3, I focus on building my argument about how social media has created a warped version of the gaze and how it has arguably created an inverted self surveillance for women and adapted them to become a self-surveyor of their own body compared to what they see on the social media screen. With this comes the paranoid paradox and censorship with the body.

First, Michel Foucault (1936-1984) was a French historian and philosopher who believes that the gaze can be used as an apparatus for power. His writings on surveillance are extremely relevant when discussing the works of the digital gaze especially as he wasn’t around to witness social media. The panopticon gaze is used in prisons,  where the structure is circular allowing the guard to see all the prisoners who have “nowhere to hide” (Jay, 1993, p228). As we are living on social media, we are only feeding it further and creating a more in-depth version with the digitalization of our own self surveillance.

Charlotte Jansen, is a writer of Girl on Girl and talks about the female gaze. The female gaze hasn’t had time to develop and be properly researched so I have created my own theory. “Photography has played an important role in women’s emancipation and liberation” (Jansen, 2017). Jansen here refers to many contemporary artists as painting was understood by feminist artists as problematic due to hierarchal patriarchal traditions in the artworld – photography was a new material for women to use in their own way. However, we as women use social media in both a negative way – this is reflected in Jansen writings as we see idealised images of others and turn to our own negatively. Jansen choses artists to interview who celebrate the female gaze instead.

I have read Downcast Eyes by Martin Jay, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff and The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson. I have also watched Connected ep1 Surveillance and The Social Dilemma. These shows surround the issues with social media and the effects on us as humans.

This is where I have used my research and created my work towards this involvement of how social media impacts the female gaze approach to the body. However, I am unsure if the social media aspect comes off within my practice. Does it come across visually like how I want it too?

Reflection 11/03/21: As this worked for my dissertation well, I hoped it would work for my practice too but it didn’t as explored previous – however I have taken the female gaze aspect with regards to how we perceive ourselves under the male gaze and this comes across with regards to my current practice, To Bite, Just a Nibble or Two.

02/12/20 I had an end of semester informal assessment with Jane to see where I am at – theoretically/practically. We discussed this new relation of social media & the female gaze where I have tried to make it work in my practice as I am working with the digitalization of the gaze through time due to social media in my dissertation.

Reflection 19/02/21: Was very beneficial as it directed my focus back within the male gaze, sexual objectification, women as treat like object etc, from the female gaze. My work has in-depth meaning that is reciprocated in the visual.

I want to use my dissertation within my work, but only aspects of it e.g. the male gaze, sexual objectification. Reflecting on my group crit 20/11/20, the feedback I received was very beneficial for me Only Touch With CLEAN Hands presented effects of the male gaze but at the time I tried to bend the feedback round to the effects of social media instead to make my theory work. As the feedback I received was very male gaze heavy me and Jane discussed I should use it.

• Hands & breasts conveyed women are dominated still by men. Hands sanitisers suggested how women are seen as these objects to have sex with and then disregard afterwards. Dropping of the breasts create the idea of destruction/heavier visual of women being disregarded after use. Counting of the breasts represented ideas of a body count: women have sex they are seen as dirty, but is the complete opposite for men. – All these fall to sexual objectification of women through the male gaze and don’t suggest social media. Rewatching the crit allowed me to see that my practice with social media didn’t work as successfully as I felt.

Reflection 15/03/21: It was as though the concept of social media simplified my work and appeared to not have any depth further than the statement. With my current films To Bite, there’s the harsh visual forced in front of the viewers face, as though they must watch.

But, with The Haze of Social Media, I felt this theory worked well for this work. There’s the visual distortion from social media that creates this illusion for everyone one to see, that you must be perfect. As in my dissertation chapter 3 focuses on building my argument of social media creating a warped version of the gaze and created an inverted self surveillance for women and adapted them to become a self-surveyor of their own body compared to what they see on the social media screen. With this comes the paranoid paradox and censorship with the body. This all worked for my dissertation but not my work as The Haze of Social Media suggested pregnancy/fertility – something I hadn’t seen before/didn’t want to explore.

• It opened up more confusion than discussion for my artwork – it question my research/theory.

Reflection 14/04/21: I am glad I came to this conclusion as it allowed me to develop my research/work to respond to exposing the effects of the male gaze/sexual obj in life, cinema and pornography upon women through a female perspective. This allowed me to realise performance has been very successful within my work.

For my dissertation I have been researching the development from the gaze, to the male gaze to the female gaze due to social media. For this I have searched theorists and writers like Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey and Charlotte Jansen. This is something that works really well for my dissertation as it allows me to explore the growth and where its adapted/changed in the world among women as well as artists. I am really interested in the way social media has changed the formation of the gaze to have created an inverted self surveillance within women for my dissertation.