Degree Project: Digital Sketchbook

Martha Rosler was a name from my group crit 24/11/20, to explore the male gaze, effects upon women and the “oppressive women’s roles” (MoMa, 2020) of the kitchen further.

Reflection 19/03/21: Rosler’s performance piece within the kitchen inspired me to use the kitchen space for Are You Watching? group exhibition for Congruous which played well to my outcome.

I’m currently interested in performance based work, Semiotics of the Kitchen above is a 6 minute feminist performance film. Rosler first shows herself putting on an apron in the kitchen, very serious with intent for viewers to watch and listen. Rosler parodies the popularised tv cooking show, Julia Child from the 60s and acts as a stance against it as they also glamourise the housewife role, to indulge women to follow that path. She isn’t against the food, but instead where women are shown how to be the ‘perfect’ house wife.

Reflection 26/05/21: Rosler’s piece upon reflection carries a similar approach to the representation of women/how women are portrayed on the cinema/tv screen, like Valie Export addresses. Action Pants: Genital Panic explores the realism of women and their bodies with an aggressive tone with a gun, the same way Rosler uses aggression and the manipulation of kitchen tools in Semiotics of the Kitchen. The same way I use the male mouth in To Bite B&W Repeat as a destructive tool to show the destruction of the female form under male control/consumption.

She takes takes kitchen utensils in alphabetical order, A – Z, to both destroy and challenge this glamorisation of women in the kitchen. With each use of kitchen utensil, she grows quicker/harder to visualise the frustration Rosler has for this expectation of women. By doing this Rosler, a woman, becomes the “sign of the system” (MoMa, 2020) and a language of frustration in the kitchen. However, between the use of each tool, she slows down, and becomes very delicate when picking up the next tool but then becomes violent again.

Reflection 15/04/21: I have carried this violence from Rosler’s Semiotics in the Kitchen into Sweet Tooth B&W as I feel visually, the violence, is most effective in relation to the male form through the female gaze for all viewers to see/understand.

Rosler intended the video to challenge the recognised system of everyday kitchen meanings and “shows that the structures of power, domination, and submission and their ideological ramifications have to be detected and analysed not only within the economic, social, and political realms but also within the system of language and signs itself that constitutes the order of the Symbolic” (Eiblmayr, 1982). “The transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 85), as well as reassessing the women’s role in the kitchen?

Reflection 22/01/21: This pushed me to becomes more interactive with my films: including my body/hands within the frame showcasing movement in Baking which wasn’t as successful as I hoped but was a good source of experimentation in relation to Rosler.

The camera observes Rosler movements/punctuating gestures and I wonder if it suggests there’s this relation to the use of the camera being the watching eye, giving access into the kitchen through a female POV. Exploring emotions and gestures of rage/frustration towards the ideals of a perfect housewife isn’t as perfect as Julia Child suggests?? Builds/destroy the breasts within my work, in a kitchen setting could be a response to Rosler’s film and women’s expectations. There is also a lot of contrasted with eye contact with the camera as well as the viewer, making her visual message as direct as she can – something quite sinister about this video. This idea of the sinister act was also mentioned within my film Only Touch With CLEAN Hands.

Reflection 11/04/21: The relation to sinister visual and using the camera as a watching eye is where I am at with Sweet Box, using the camera to be the audiences’ eye since they can’t physically be in the space.

Knife at 3.13 – Rosler looks at the viewer with quite a lot of rage and begins to dagger the knife in the air but then gently places it down onto the table, see above. When showing how the tools work, she gets quicker and then during an action, I noticed she throws her hand away as though she is disregarding/throwing away the domestic role of women that comes with this tool – many impactful movements. Especially with ‘tenderiser’ at 5.21 she says the name so delicately but then contrasts this by slamming it into the table. Towards the end “she is not personifying another utensil but the letter itself: U, V, W, X, Y, Z become written by her body, which in turn means that her body becomes written by them” (Eiblmayr, 1982), as though women are consumed by this role and eventually conform. She finishes her video with a shrug as if she is unapologetic and questioning if society/expectations will change.

Reflection 22/12/20: “Experience of the action” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 86) she doesn’t use text in her films, so it becomes all about action. This film has similar confrontation that is present in Hot Meat. Or is the film more direct and angrier?

“In the series Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain, made between 1965 and 1972, Rosler deconstructs representations of women in mass circulation magazines” (Tate, 2015). Rosler created Cold Meat I, Cold Meat II, Hot Meat and Damp Meat, she visualises “placing the commodified female flesh within the arena of food preparation and consumption” (Tate, 2015).  She uses popular culture images from magazines and playboy to collage the idealised female body onto an oven, suggesting how women are expected to both be the ‘idealised’ as well as filling the domesticated role of the kitchen and as housewife.

• She objects the domesticated roles of the kitchen within her collages and reinvents this use of anger in Semiotics of the Kitchen, as though she is trying a new angle of attention.

I want to use this assertiveness in film and felt motivated by the research with ideas of filming I drew/written up some ideas with moving into the kitchen. I have a lot of thoughts to bring within my work for the domestic setting/environment to see how it impacts the film further.

15/04/21: There’s been this graduation of the kitchen/consumption/violence becoming more obvious within my practice over time.

Reflection 03/03/21: I already had thoughts of being in the kitchen space because of my 1-1 with Newson 26/10/20, and naturally continued this aspect for Congruous. It worked really well in relation to the change of environment, it added to appearance of the sculptures, meaning and the distortion of the projection in the space.

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.